More painting and identifying problems

I think I might actually be limited by my choice of paper at this point. All of the tutorials are using cotton watercolor paper, which seems to be able to retain water and stay workable much better than what I am using. It simply does not stay wet and I am having a hard time with wet on wet technique.

I was able to do some lifting of color with the mountains. I was not successful with the clouds because they dried too fast. I played around with adding cloud shadows today, and tested out the Japanese White paint that came in my watercolor kit. It is suprisingly somewhat opaque, but not to the extent of gouache. Still, it did brighten up my cloud tops.

Not happy with the sky colors at all, but wanted to replicate the colors used in my beginning watercolor book (reference photo below).  I added the clouds because I definitely need the practice. Poor gradient plus unfortunate placement of clouds = lesson learned. Will stick to dry brush until I can figure out the paper situation.

Reference