INTRODUCTION
WATERCOLOR:

A Personal History

Watercolor may be the earliest paint one encounters as a young child. A simple paint set of colors and a soft-haired brush connect a young person with his or her thoughts and help directly communicate impressions of the nearby world. Perhaps you recall watching liquid pools of color blend together for the first time. Working with watercolor is immediate and spontaneous, yet it is also dramatic, able to stir wonder and mystery.

The author as a young girl

I began taking watercolor lessons as an adolescent and remember sitting on the beach with a watercolor paper block and plastic palette full of tube watercolors. My instructor showed me how to hold the flat brush and glide it back and forth to paint the waves as they moved to shore. He made it look effortless and captivating. The blue-green ocean seemed to wash itself onto his paper. When I painted the same water, I remember being frustrated trying to paint like someone else and was probably straining beyond my skills.

My interest in watercolor was renewed in graduate school when our professor demonstrated how to make watercolor paint by hand, grinding the pigments one by one with water and gum arabic. There is so much room for discovery in mixing paints from raw ingredients. Through the nuances of paint-making processes and by incorporating different materials and ways of applying them, I try to reshape the medium for my work. By experimenting, I have learned that I like to include layers of transparent color with areas of opaque handmade watercolor in my paintings. I tend to mix white with a color to make a tint, as well as allowing the white of the paper to show through in other areas. These technical aspects can impart and support the concepts within the work.

Through the projects in this book and in practice, try to unearth your own strategies. Blend tradition with new methods. Combine what you know with a zeal for discovery and find new ways to approach the painting process. Make the paint work for you and convey your ideas so you can create your own work, unlike that of anyone else.