WATERCOLOR | GRANULES | TEA to BUTTER
In the Painterly Manner…
The painting is good when it makes you feel something
Butter, Coffee, and Tea
Roxanne is rendering her first lessons in watercolor at La Montalla in Tuscany. It’s about the nature of the medium. I know, for me, the lesson of watercolor from first grade was that all my pictures turned to mud! But that’s not what she is conveying about this intensely creative medium. It’s about pigment, and water, and brushes, and moisture, and gravity, and paper. Each is a variable that contributes to something vivid and compelling.
The ratio of pigment to water comes first. With small amounts of water, the mix has the consistency of butter. With more water, it can become cream, milk, coffee, or weak tea. It has a physicality that you can feel and remember. All of these have a purpose in the painting. If everything is the consistency of milk, the painting will seem “flat.” All it takes is a little butter to “pop” the picture.
This is an “aha” moment for a lot of students. The medium has characteristics…aspects that can be controlled and allowed to be out of control. And that idea, letting go of control, is the real lesson.
Pigments
Dropping a spot of water into an already wet square of pigment has an effect that can be understood over time with practice. The water will push the pigment toward a cauliflower or bloom shape that is just a delight! A painter could never deliberately replicate what the medium itself is capable of doing when left on its own.
The lesson includes techniques and technicalities; the granulation of some pigments, the way the pigment continues to evolve as long as it is wet, the effect of gravity, the style of the brush, and the quantity of fluid it can carry. But there are other lessons as well….
Learning to be patient with drying. Learning to let go of control. Learning what the medium, paper, and brush can do is what makes the work “painterly” rather than photo-realistic. Learning to let go of “mistakes.” Learning how to draw with hard edges and soft edges, with dark values and light values, and learning to find and render the focal point.
The Way of Painterliness
That’s the painterly aim, not to replicate the flower but to convey the feel of it, to create an emotion on paper by drawing the eye to the focal point… leaving peripheral vision to take in the rest.
These are meditative artists…some chatter, some laughter, some questions, and a lot of silence, concentration, and aha moments.
Creativity is a contemplative practice… it is intensely spiritual. Like so many things in life, there are details and techniques that need attention, and too much attention seems self-defeating. It seems to boil down to a kind of active meditation, a deliberate focus and engagement that, at the same time, is a process of letting go. And letting go is so satisfying….
A beautiful photo essay about roses in Singapore by Medium writer Shanti C K. These are stunning photographs!
The Rev. Ron Steed is an Episcopal Deacon in Southeast Connecticut and a chaplain at Lawrence & Memorial Hospital in New London, CT. He writes haiku and lyrical prose that he hopes will help others put the head and heart in right-relation.
Top writer in Art, Watercolor, Haiku, Sermons, Refresh the Soul Weekly, and Episcopal Church.
Roxanne Steed is an artist, instructor, and mentor in watercolor, specializing in oil and watercolor-journal paintings in New England and Europe. Her website is RoxanneSteed.com
