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This week I'm participating in an online watercolour workshop with Andy Evansen, an award-winning American artist. One of his most important lessons is that watercolour artists in particular need to view compositions in terms of shapes, to allow us to better reserve the light areas of our cotton-paper.
That's why I called this set of exercises: "Seeing shapes, not sheep".
Unlike in acrylic or oil painting, in which an artist can layer light colours over darks, the palest colours in a watercolour are the paper itself showing through. Once you've laid down pigment onto a watercolour surface, you can't make it paler. You can lift the pigment off, in limited areas, but that doesn't work well with staining pigments like the phthalo blues and greens that I adore.