My watercolor teacher, Eric Wiegardt, has encouraged us to “draw with the brush”, that is, to begin the painting boldly with the brush, with no pencil lines to use as a guide.
Normally I begin my painting with a pencil outline so that I know where my shapes are. Without the pencil lines to go by, the huge expanse of white paper seems overwhelming. The problem with beginning with a pencil outline is that you tend to just fill in the outline with watercolor, resulting in a stiff, paint-by-numbers feeling.
So when I painted the lovely barns of the Schmuck/Smith Dairy Farm near Sequim recently, I took a bold approach and painted the barns directly with yellow on my brush. I think it helped give a more spontaneous look to the painting. I then put some blue and some red on my brush with a dollop of water and painted the shadowed ends of the barns, leaving the sunny roofs and sides mostly white. I think the looseness of the paint strokes helped the overall effect.
(The date stamp in the upper right is a leftover from the Whidbey Plein Air Paintout. This is the back of one of the paintings from that event).
I can see why without the pencil marks it would seem scary. You have achieved a new level of painting without the marks. There’s no stopping you now.