This moment, and the moment after

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After the moment of application, no other medium besides watercolor keeps working in the next moment without your looking or controlling. You might start with a runny blue and charge a purple into it, then because it is wet, you leave it alone and move on to a drier part of the painting, mentally noting that you’ll come back in a couple of minutes to work on that area some more. Magic happens in those couple of minutes, and you’re not even paying attention! The painting paints itself. In other mediums, you don’t have this happening - when you stop painting/coloring/pastel-ing/graphite-ing/charcoaling, the work stops with you. Watercolor is magical. When you look again, something beyond your control has happened. It’s beautiful. You only control a part of the moment; water and pigment complete the moment for you.

These are sweet peas given to me by a friend on my birthday. The stems were the striking part - slim, parallel, green reeds. 

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