The transparent nature of watercolour allows artists to layer washes of colour to create depth and complexity. As each layer is applied, the underlying colours remain visible, resulting in a sense of depth and richness that is difficult to replicate with opaque mediums.
Why is Painting in Watercolour so Challenging?
Painting in watercolour is a magical journey of colours, watery embraces and splashes of visual delight. Its luminosity, transparency, and fluidity combine to form a captivating and exhilarating medium. The ability to create soft, luminous, and translucent effects are difficult to replicate with other mediums.
Despite its appeal, watercolour is often considered a difficult medium to use. Interestingly, the qualities that make watercolour so enchanting also contribute to its challenging nature.
In this blog post, I will discuss the reasons some artists might encounter difficulties when using watercolour and I’ll offer some tips on how to overcome them.
Have you ever found yourself staring at a blank piece of white watercolour paper and not known how to begin your watercolour painting? That fear of failure creeps in and almost paralyses you. Don’t worry, you’re not alone. I feel it too. I nearly always feel anxious about starting a painting but once I get started, I begin to let go of the fear and enjoy the process of painting.
Why is watercolour hard to use?
Watercolour is a truly unique artistic medium, possessing a myriad of characteristics that distinguish it from other mediums. Many of the challenges encountered by beginners arise from their unfamiliarity with its unique qualities.
Watercolour’s unique qualities:
Watercolour’s fluid nature
Unlike oil or acrylic paint, watercolour is fluid, it moves on the paper. This means that you may feel like you are not in control of what the paint is doing.
It can be unpredictable and it can lead to unexpected colour mixes or unwanted blooms where the drying pigment is disturbed. When you first start with watercolour, you may be hesitant and clumsy when you paint but the more you use it, the more confidence you gain and the more successful you become. You will begin to see just how unique watercolour is and how it can do things that no other medium can do.
An additional aspect about the fluidity of watercolour that may confuse beginner artists is that we don’t use white paint to adjust colour tones; instead, water serves this purpose. Water added to the pigment increases its fluidity but decreases its tonal value.
When aiming for a deeper tone, a greater amount of pigment is applied, while for a lighter tone, an increased proportion of water is combined with the mixture.
In contrast, oil and acrylic painting involve the utilisation of white to illuminate tonal values.
How to use watercolour’s fluid nature to your advantage.
When working wet on wet, the fluidity of watercolour paint is one of its characteristics that makes it so appealing to use. Some artists say that a watercolour painting often paints itself. This is because of the spontaneous and unpredictable nature of working with watercolour. It captures the idea that watercolour, due to its unique properties, can sometimes lead to unexpected and beautiful results that may seem to emerge organically, almost as if guided by the medium itself.
Skilled watercolour artists bring their expertise, knowledge of techniques, and artistic vision to their work, but they also embrace the element of spontaneity where they allow the medium to play a role in the creative process.
If you are just beginning your watercolour journey, you need to learn about the different degrees of wetness of watercolour paper. Wet paint will spread further on paper that is quite wet. If you wait for the paper to become less wet, the paint won’t spread as far.
The only way you can learn about this is to experiment. Wet your paper and paint on it with a fluid mixture of paint and watch how far it spreads.
Wait a few minutes until the sheen on the surface of the paper isn’t quite as shiny as it was when you first wet it, and paint on that.
Wait a bit longer and paint on paper that has lost the sheen altogether but is still damp. Take note of what is happening.
Then, try painting on dry paper.
When you work on wet paper, pay attention to the wetness of your brush as well as the amount of water that is on your paper and the amount of water you have in your paint mixture.
If you find the pigment spreads too far on the wet paper you may need to adjust something. Either your paper is too wet, your paint mixture is too watery or perhaps your brush was too wet when you loaded it with paint.
Experiment, make changes and take note of what you did differently. When you understand the different degrees of paper wetness you’ll be able to make soft edges or hard edges easily.
To make your paintings more visually interesting, make use of a wet wash by using the charging technique to add some unexpected colour changes through your painting.
Use some ordinary table salt to create texture in a wet wash.
Take a wet brush and drop some water into a drying wash to create some deliberate blooms.
There are lots of things you can do to take advantage of the fluid nature of watercolour paint.
Should you control watercolour or let it run freely?
The answer to that question depends on your unique voice. What look do you want for your paintings? Are you trying to convey a message or capture a mood or moment?
In regard to my own painting style, I like to depict the subject in a realistic way but I also like to embody the unique fluid characteristics of watercolour in my paintings. In other words, I like my watercolour paintings to look like watercolour paintings.
I try not to control the fluid nature of watercolour paint too much, because I don’t want my painting to lack spontaneity. I want it to be visually appealing. On the other hand, I try to have some control because I don’t want my painting to devolve into a chaotic, muddy mishmash. For me, it’s a balancing act where I try to create a dance between spontaneity and control.
Learning how to blend both spontaneity with control can help you to create exciting and dynamic watercolour paintings. Understanding the unique qualities of watercolour is how you begin to move towards creating successful paintings.
Details:
Continuing her exploration of neo-surrealist figuration and motifs involving water as a metaphor for the fluidity of introspection, the artist depicts a nude figure in soft focus. Her vision of a female body in water was made using a delicate overlay of liquid resin on top of her painted acrylics.
Unframed
Signed
① Artwork:
Sound of water
Continuing her exploration of neo-surrealist figuration and motifs involving water as a metaphor for the fluidity of introspection, this artist has created a mesmerizing figurative image. Her arresting vision of a female body in water was made using a delicate overlay of liquid resin on top of her painted acrylics. She also incorporates natural elements in the water, such as the silhouettes of leaves, to signify how the body is naturally connected with nature.
Larissa De Jesús Negrón is an introspective multidisciplinary artist who seeks self-evaluation through her intimate and often otherworldly paintings. Her stylistically varied, neo-surrealist work comes from the artist’s curiosity about the subconscious and psychoanalysis, offering the viewer a cathartic connection via her visual language.
Specs:
20 inches
24 inches
Selenas Mountain :
63 Woodward Ave
#6321
Ridgewood
United States of America
Larissa De Jesús Negrón is an introspective multidisciplinary artist who seeks self-evaluation through her intimate yet often otherworldly paintings. Her stylistically varied, neo-surrealist work comes from the artist’s curiosity about the subconscious and psychoanalysis. As such, she has expressed a profound interest in healing and addressing trauma through her work while giving the viewer a cathartic way to connect. Expectations society puts upon women, the vitality of nature, humor as a coping mechanism, and storytelling as a tool for healing are all existential themes in her work.
Larissa De Jesús Negrón was born in 1994 in Puerto Rico and lives in New York City, NY. She studied Drawing and Painting at The School of Plastic Arts in Old San Juan but transferred to Hunter College in New York City, NY, where she earned her BFA (2017).
Negrón has participated in multiple exhibitions, including Continuous Present, Lorin Gallery, Los Angeles, CA (2022); Satori, L21 Gallery, Mallorca, Spain (2022); Have we met?, Tesoro Collection, Amsterdam (2022); Le Corps-Paysage, Bim Bam Gallery, Paris, France (2022); These opalescent dreams of mine, Selenas Mountain, Ridgewood, NY (2022); Summer Summer Group Show, Ross and Kramer, New York, NY (2021); and Damas Damas Damas Damas, The Green Gallery, WI (2021).
