I have been painting watercolors since I was sixteen years old.  It was a struggle in the beginning.  Looking back, it is a wonder that I stuck with it as long as I have.  I say this because watercolor is not the most forgiving medium in the world.  Unlike oils or acrylics, it is more difficult to paint over mistakes in watercolor than it is in some other forms of painting.  That is not to say that errors cannot be carefully corrected in some cases.  With a little planing and a suitcase full of practice, anyone can learn the techniques used in painting a successful watercolor.

I grew up watching my grandmother paint oils.  She had a designated studio where she could walk away from her paints without creating a household mess.  Perhaps it is because I had no such studio as a teenager that I began experimenting with watercolor.  Watercolor cleans up fairly easily.  It was something that I could do in the bedroom or on the kitchen table and wash up when I was finished.

There were few books on the subject in 1966 when I began teaching myself to paint.  My high school art instructor was my biggest influence.  He brought a painting to school that he was working on, and it stimulated me to experiment with paints.  Up until that time I had only worked with pencils or pen and ink.  I began to read up on watercolor and found a book, Ways With Watercolor by Ted Kautzky.  That, combined with another book, John Pike Paints Watercolors served as my first guides to a lifetime of painting watercolors.

Both  Kautzky and Pike painted in what is often referred to as transparent watercolor.  Simply put, the paints are fairly transparent and color and texture is achieved through layering washes on top of one another like layers of cellophane.  The painting begins rather loosely with the lightest layers being on the bottom.  Gradually the painting becomes more detailed and darks begin to take shape.  All the while, there is an attempt to allow parts of layers and previous passages beneath to show through.  This is the opposite of painting with thick opaque pigments like oils or acrylics that attempt to cover completely.  No white paint is used in the purest forms of transparent watercolor.  Instead the white of the paper actually becomes the whites in the finished piece.  To accomplish this, the artist plans ahead and leaves virgin paper for the whitest whites in the completed painting.  Various tones and values in the lightest colors are achieved through the most transparent of washes and layering. That is how I learned to paint watercolors. For the longest time I was convinced that it was the only way to approach this art form.  Even my college art classes taught a transparent approach to watercolor.

Let’s not stop there. By definition, watercolor can be defined as any painted pigment soluble in water.  That could include Gouache, an opaque form of watercolor often used by illustrators and architects.  It also includes acrylics when they are applied to paper. Egg tempera is another form of watercolor, though it is generally applied to a rigid surface and not to paper unless it is applied sparingly.  Generally speaking, we are talking about all paints that are mixed with water and painted on a paper surface.  Most of these are later framed under glass or plexiglas.  The Egyptians actually used watercolors to paint the insides of their tombs.  These pigments have lasted thousands of years.  Most watercolors are quite permanent when protected from direct sunlight.

I use a heavy Arches brand paper for my paintings.  It is a  molded paper made of 100% rag fibers with deckled edges that is imported from France.  Arches has been making quality papers for centuries.  I like Arches because they make a very heavy, tough paper with a texture that I prefer.  It allows me to wet it over and over again.

Because I paint quite large, I use a heated vacuum press to flatten the paper after large washes. The 1100+ pound paper is heavy enough that it does not warp excessively like lighter weight papers do. It does not require stretching.  I sometimes scrub on it and remove paint that was laid down in previous washes.  I can scratch out highlights.  For this I need a paper that can take a lot of abuse.  It is just a part of the painting process and I am not ever afraid to experiment.  Putting  down paint and later scrubbing it out, stains the paper and leaves values that are hard to achieve any other way.  These are all traditional techniques in the art of transparent watercolor.

At some point I became dissatisfied with the limitations of transparent watercolor in the most traditional sense of the word.  Being  strapped to an ideology that watercolors should only be painted using a transparent technique seemed counter productive.  Why should the painting suffer if combining additional painting techniques can actually enhance the entire artistic process?  There are entire painting organizations made up of painters who religiously follow the principles behind transparent watercolor.  I used to belong to one.  While this seems a bit silly to me, I must admit that there is a freshness that can be achieved no other way.  However, some subjects can suffer when the artist is always painting around whites and saving highlights, ultimately making  for a much tighter and stiffer painting. I am much more interested in developing my own personal approach to painting.   I like to experiment while using the traditional transparent technique as a foundation.

I learned the art of egg tempera by grinding my own pigments and mixing them into an egg emulsion.  The egg yolk becomes a binder that adheres to a painting surface like glue. These finely ground pigments combined with water and an egg emulsion make great paints in the most classical way. Egg tempera can be extremely subtle when added as translucent layered strokes.  I am careful not to build up the pigment into an impasto because egg tempera is extremely brittle and requires a rigid surface for thicker applications.  Paper breathes and is pliable.  Think of  it this way,  egg tempera is but a brick in a building.  It is but a tool, and I use it quite sparingly.  I have found that egg tempera can make great highlights or add detail and texture.  White gouache can be added to most any regular pigment to add opacity.  There are times when I find this beneficial.  Again, I use gouache sparingly in my personal approach to painting.  I like to add white gouache to black in some situations to get a rich black of lesser value.

Unless you are a painter, much of what I discuss here may be of little importance.  For those of us who paint watercolors, I feel that making art is about pushing boundaries, no matter what we choose to do as artists. In the end it is our personal thumbprint that should come through in every painting that we do.

“Tin Men” cover painting for Watercolor USA Exhibition catalog 2008. To learn more about Watercolor USA, visit www.watercolorusa.org.

This painting is painted mostly by using the transparent painting techniques that I learned as a budding watercolor painter over 40 years ago.  The whites are mostly shades of the white paper showing through.  However, the blacks are opaque.