Materials and drawing MATERIALS USED: Arches CP #140 watercolor paper, a 1" red sable Grumbacher wash brush. A candle and a number of light colored crayons from and old pack of 64. COLORS USED: Permanent Rose, Ultramarine Blue, Dioxazine Purple, Pthalocyanine Blue, Burnt Umber. I gathered the materials and roughed in a quick landscape in pencil.
	Is that a moon? I started by drawing the moon in with the edge of a candle. I couldn't see the wax on the paper so I continued to throw in some cloud forms that I couldn't see. I then rough in some reflections below the moon, in the soon-to-be dark lake.
Picking out some grassy areas Using a yellow-green crayon I drew in some grassy reed areas around the edges of the lake area.
	It is futile to resist Using a yellow crayon I added more details to the grassy areas. With the yellow-green crayon I put a light tone along the edge of the horizon. I finished by dotting a few stars in the sky with a white crayon and using a light periwinkle blue to try and catch some highlights in the lake area.
Are the stars out tonight? I mixed a intense Ultramarine Blue wash and started laying in the night sky. The areas covered with wax resist the paint, and stay white. Not quite what I had visualized, but I digress and continue.
	Maybe a little more color As I washed in the rest of the sky area I added some Permanent Rose and a touch of Dioxazine purple towards the horizon line to liven things up. I mixed some Ultramarine Blue and Burnt Umber into a medium gray and started to cut in the background hills over the resist areas.
Shifting colors and water tones The gray didn't work out too well so I layed a wash of pure Ultramarine over top of the backgroud hills to pop up the color. I then mixed some Pthalocyanine Green with a bit of the previous gray wash and pulled the green wash over the surface of the lake, revealing more resist detail.
	It's easy to resist I continued with the grayed-green wash, leaving a bit of white paper and drybrush toward the far shore to accentuate the reflections on the water. Some backwash came down from the blue hills so I worke d the blue into the lake. Click image to enlarge. The wax resist technique requires some thought and preplanning if you are doing representational work.