This week is all about ‘less is more’ - using just one or two colours, allowing the white of the paper to show and working with values (the water:pigment ratio) rather than hues (different colours) to tell a story.
So there’s this painting:
It started with two colours - Sepia and Jane’s Grey - mixed together and painted in a rough line along the horizon and down along where the road would be. Then there was clean water. Lots of it. Stroked onto the paper, sprayed using a mister, dropped using a clean brush. Then more pigment, dropped into the water, pushed and pulled around. More water. More pigment.
And then hold.
I propped it up on my desk to dry thoroughly overnight - I do these last thing in the evening because otherwise there is too much temptation for me to fiddle. ‘Just a little more here!’ I think. ‘And what if I just add a line there?’
No, not this time. Allow the pigment to settle, the water to dry.
Each time I looked across at it from my bed, it looked a little bit more like something. When I was laying down the wash I had a vague idea of a road and some bushes and two trees. But each time I looked at it as it was drying it was clear that what I had planned wasn’t what it was going to be.
The two big splotches I had planned to be trees were clearly clouds. And the road that I thought was leading straight out to the horizon actually curved around to the right. Was there a fence there maybe? And is it raining?
This part, the ‘wait and see’ part, is actually the most important part.
It gives the pigment time to move and settle, the water time to move and dry. And it gives me time to release my expectations about what the picture is going to be.
It’s not the art that needs to conform to the image in the artist’s mind, it’s the artist that needs to stop clinging to the image they’ve created, or are working from.
When I sat down to the painting again the next day, I could see it. The clouds, the hill, the spiky grass along the road. I asked myself ‘what is the least amount of painting I can do to help others recognise what I’m seeing?’
And that’s harder than you’d think, because not only do you have to choose the right details, they have to fit with the overall style of the piece.
At first I went in with a wire fence and gate across the road. That fit with the image in my mind … but it didn’t fit with the piece. It was too much detail - two long horizontal lines and a handful of short vertical ones, too much detail! - but it was. So I tried to soften them, and went too far the other way - they disappeared completely.
‘Never mind,’ I thought, I can go back and put them in again.
Except that when I went back they weren’t necessary, because the softened fence lines had become a distant mountain range.
“We don’t make mistakes,” said Bob Ross, “just happy accidents.” And in this instance, he was right.
The trunk and branches of trees, slightly softened out, either side of the ‘gate’. And spiky grass, or perhaps the remnants of old fences along the road.
And that was it.
The barest few strokes of paint, the slightest application of water, and it was done.
Painting in this style is a challenge for me. I’m an over-doer from way back. Over-doer. Over-achiever. Nitpicker. Detail handler. If there’s a way to make something ‘too much’ I will find it, because I am always so worried about being ‘not enough’. I will always rush in to do the next thing, because I am so worried about being criticised for not doing anything.
And so, beyond the art of watercolour itself, there’s a lesson here for me in life, too.
Sit back. Wait and see.
You don’t have to fill every space. You don’t have to use every colour in the palette, or every brush stroke you know.
You don’t have to do ALL THE THINGS.
Where in my life can I wait and see? Where in my life can I wait for magic to unfold? Where in my life can I allow things to do their own thing and come back later to see what value I can add?
Because sometimes, if you are contemplative, intentional and restrained; and if you wait and see how things unfold, what comes next is magic.
evk
17 January 2022
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