Aquadisiac

 

Watercolours are sexy. Not to mention the paintings produced using this sporadic, free-flowing medium. Sweeping a brush across thick, porous paper is sexy, watching a single droplet of water fall on a vibrant patch of colour and create gradiance is sexy, and most of all...putting a sodden brush in a jar of clear water and seeing the vibrant pigment float like ethereal smoke through the liquid is, you guessed it...sexy. There's nothing quite like working with them. They make an ordinary image painted with say, acrylics, look dried and flat. Imperfections are all too noticeable with traditional mediums, and all too fixable. With watercolours, imperfections can be swept into new lines, new strokes of creativity. The first instinct is the right one. The addition of water is the key. Water is wild, water has free reign, using water in the equation of a medium is like using an extension of your aura to paint. However, the magic truly happens when water meets pigment. Together on a stretch of paper, pigment becomes wildfire. Notoriously difficult to control because of their inherently wild nature, watercolours can seem unapproachable, but it is in this nature that the magic exists. Watercolours are transparent depending on application, and this transparency is luminous, giving pigment in their purer form time to shine. Watercolours make the depiction of skin dewey, almost touchable. They make hair appear a free-flowing waterfall of highlights and lowlights, and the benefits don't end in the depiction of human subjects. A skyline at dusk can become a picture perfect imitation of the true to life deep blues and liquid quality of a changing sky, luminous like light through a pane of stained glass. To live with watercolour is to remember the sporadic, changeable nature of life. Nothing can be contained, nothing can be held back, reminiscent of floodtides or summer downpours. Using water to depict a scene or subject harks back to the natural flow of things. Spontaneity 

rules this medium. And there's nothing sexier.

 

Caldonia - Aquadisiac