Transformation
Recently, I met a friend for lunch who was trying to figure out what to do with her time now that her two children are in college. She was saying maybe something creative, maybe painting - but watercolor is so hard, she said - there is no room to make mistakes.
I was listening.
She asked me - isn't that true - you cannot fix mistakes in a watercolor?
Well, I found myself saying, it is true that it is less forgiving than other mediums. With oil or acrylic, or anything opaque, you can slap on more paint to cover mistakes, or slap on white, to get back your whites. And you can do that ad infinitum - layers and layers of fixing.
In watercolor, you have to plan your whites.
And live with your mistakes.
But only you know they are mistakes. Nobody else knows. So it is what you make of them, what they might mean in the painting. And how you might turn your mistakes into positives that serve the painting.
I said to her that watercolor is the medium that will transform you the most in character - in that it makes you let go, be ok with the imperfections and the mistakes, because you cannot fix them. You have to accept them.
I had not realized this until I said it. It is so zen, so Buddhist in spirit.
Now I feel like reading about wabi-sabi.
From Wikipedia: In traditional Japanese aesthetics, wabi-sabi (侘寂) is a world view centered on the acceptance of transience and imperfection. The aesthetic is sometimes described as one of beauty that is "imperfect, impermanent, and incomplete."
These are a few other small watercolors I have done in the past few days. I love industrial stuff, shipyards, concrete crushers, where there is so much "stuff" that I don't understand.
I was listening.
She asked me - isn't that true - you cannot fix mistakes in a watercolor?
Well, I found myself saying, it is true that it is less forgiving than other mediums. With oil or acrylic, or anything opaque, you can slap on more paint to cover mistakes, or slap on white, to get back your whites. And you can do that ad infinitum - layers and layers of fixing.
In watercolor, you have to plan your whites.
And live with your mistakes.
But only you know they are mistakes. Nobody else knows. So it is what you make of them, what they might mean in the painting. And how you might turn your mistakes into positives that serve the painting.
I said to her that watercolor is the medium that will transform you the most in character - in that it makes you let go, be ok with the imperfections and the mistakes, because you cannot fix them. You have to accept them.
I had not realized this until I said it. It is so zen, so Buddhist in spirit.
Now I feel like reading about wabi-sabi.
From Wikipedia: In traditional Japanese aesthetics, wabi-sabi (侘寂) is a world view centered on the acceptance of transience and imperfection. The aesthetic is sometimes described as one of beauty that is "imperfect, impermanent, and incomplete."
These are a few other small watercolors I have done in the past few days. I love industrial stuff, shipyards, concrete crushers, where there is so much "stuff" that I don't understand.
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