Flora and baby bird

'Flora and baby bird,'  watercolour/mixed media, Bockingford HP paper, 9 by 12 ins.

From a small doodle,  I left this painting muted or dullish because I didn't want to fiddle with it, darkening tones etc.  I prefer to leave it and go on to another one and so improve my technique.  

The acrylic medium with the stencil acts as a resist, rather like wax crayon or oil pastel.  You could use crayon instead of acrylic for this technique.  In future, I may leave the resist undercoat off and just do colourful watercolurs.  Or I may go in the other direction and add more media, such as inks and pastels to the method.

I think it depends on the imagery really....delicate imagery like this one seems not to need multimedia as much.  

My small set of pan pastels came today: red,yellow, blue, black and white, good for a starter palette.   I've wanted a set for a while.  I am keen to try them out.