Middle Way

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In Buddhism, the Middle Way is the path that avoids two extremes. Not denial, nor indulgence.
In watercolor, I have to find the right point, the perfect balance, between all the possible edges. Not too many hard, not too many soft, some lost, some found - the middle way.
Edges are another whole topic in watercolor. To me, it is so exciting to discover a facet of this medium, and how deep it goes, how much information there is about it: composition, edges, color, how the eye moves, hierarchy of shapes. I am slowly getting an art education as I spend time exploring watercolor. And I feel I have the rest of my life to slowly learn it, slowly get better at it.

This was done en plein air in our front yard this morning over my second cup of ginger-mint tea. It takes a lot of patience to work in layers - the basic overall shape first, then the carving out of darker blades and lighter blades of leaves, some in front, some behind, creating depth on the 2D sheet, a fair bit of negative painting, and then the final darks - the deep crevices in the plant where the light cannot reach, that gives the plant its 3D form. The key is to hit the ends of the value range - lightest light, and darkest dark both.


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