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When in doubt, leave it white. (Gene Allen)
Watercolor is a swim in the metaphysics of life... a mirror of one's own character. Let it be unpredictable and colorful. (Anonymous)
Watercolours, when they are framed, are separated from the viewer by glass. With a canvas painting the viewer can look and see the brush strokes, texture and even touch one's painting if so inclined. The glass separates the viewer from the material... less satisfying visually... and yet they have to be protected. (Denise Bezanson)
In watercolor, if you are not in trouble, then you're in trouble. (Selma Blackburn)
In watercolour, particularly, it's almost always better to chuck than fix. (Joe Joseph P. Blodgett)
-My Sentence Was a Thousand Years of Joy...
Wherever there is water there is someone drowning. (Robert Bly)
Watercolor is like life. Better get it right the first time – you don't get a second chance! (Sergei Bongart)
After a thousand watercolors you will find you have fallen in love with paper and paint. (Rex Brandt)
Perhaps watercolour is more art than acrylics or oil, because the opportunity to correct errors is very limited as the colours are transparent... The sun, wind and temperature influences water-pigment-paper!! Everything flows, painting with watercolors! (Adriana Buggino)
Watercolor is a medium that can be as demanding and temperamental as those who choose to paint with it. But it is a colorful and exciting medium all the same – well suited to describing the many moods of the subject, as well as those of the artist wielding the brush. (Jean Burman)
-on John Singer Sargent...
To live with Sargent's watercolours is to live with sunshine captured and held. (Evan Charteris)
Applying diluted acrylic gel medium to the surface of illustration board (Strathmore 500 series hot-press) enhances the results of watercolor. When sweeping a broad brush charged with color over the medium-coated surface, the paint immediately repels and creates exciting textures... (Cheng-Khee Chee)
A photograph to me is always a reminder of how the person was on a certain day in that certain light fixed. When I look at a watercolor of that same person, it seems to me alive, more open than a photograph. (Francesco Clemente)
I cannot 'sort of' be a watercolorist; I'm forever trying to be the best I can be. (William H. Condit)
Translucence is an effect unique to the medium of watercolor and the lure that beckons me into the studio for yet another creative adventure. (Michele Cooper)
Watercolors are more difficult to control and very often a mistake in color or value is not easy to fix. Oils, on the other hand, can be manipulated much more easily. People often ask me which one I prefer, and the answer is the one I'm using at the time. (Guy Corriero)
Watercolor: You Can Do It! (Tony Couch)
Water supports all our endeavors, from the simple task of making paint flow, to sustaining life. It is the common denominator that all humanity shares. (Sharon Crosbie)
It was a great test of my ability to work with... watercolors. And it was also a test of my patience; I needed to put myself in a completely disciplined position... I couldn't make mistakes. (Liu Dan)
If it is light, leave it white. (Robert Regis Dvorak)
Watercolor and its application have become a moving force, directing and enriching my life. (Theresa R. Einhorn)
Because watercolor actually moves on the paper, it is the most active of all mediums, almost a performance art. (Nita Engle)
Master water first and then paint. (Josh Goldberg)
I have no interest in the dark and gloomy. To me, the delight of watercolor is in capturing the light within the white paper by surrounding it with successive washes of transparent color. (Jean Grastorf)
I suppose all the talk about method in watercolor can be reduced to the effort of an artist to realize in large scale what he's achieved on small scale. (Irwin Greenberg)
The spontaneous and fluid look in watercolor painting only occurs when one mixes the colors like a sauce, then paints without looking back! (Joseph Gyurcsak)
In watercolour, playing around on a scrap piece of paper, or the reverse side of a 'disaster' invariably produces something interesting and uninhibited. (Wayne Robert Hall)
The watercolorist's vocabulary consists of the ability to handle edges in a variety of ways, from soft to hard. (Tony van Hasselt)
Watercolor, with all its subtle color and value gradations and its many welcome surprises, is the perfect medium for capturing mood. (Ray Hendershot)
With watercolour, you can't cover up the marks. There's the story of the construction of the picture, and then the picture might tell another story as well. (David Hockney)
Water colours are wet colours in water. (David Hockney)
Instead of just one perfect solution, an infinite number of combinations of washes and strokes will serve as a translation of the subject. The wider the range of marks that will do the job, the more carefree the application of paint can be. (Tom Hoffmann)
Everything about watercolor appeals to me, but perhaps above all, the peculiarities of the medium tend to challenge my efforts to control it... it's more like a performance or a dance. (John Hulsey)
A good piece of watercolor is expressed by heavy washes, calligraphic lines, forceful spirals, luminosity of colors, and chromatic freshness. (Kwan Y. Jung)
Lifting the paint is the best way to overcome watercolour errors. Some colours will lift without a trace. These are your friends! (Bill Kerr)
-to Erje Ayden...
Watercolors is the first and the last thing an artist does. (Willem de Kooning)
You can only master transparent watercolor by disciplined study. Knowledge frees the soul to express its creativity. Ultimately, however, the medium cannot be mastered... only handled masterfully. (Jim Kosvanec)
Being in sync with watercolor requires a confident hand and a willingness to be on the razor's edge. If you crash and burn, so what? Surely, playing it safe won't take you where you want to be. (Frank LaLumia)
Watercolour is probably the most satisfying of all mediums. Although difficult in the beginning, after practice its mysteries will unfold, providing the utmost pleasure for the dedicated. (Robert Lovett)
I seldom draw detail on the watercolor paper but let the color and area washes determine the need for detail. This keeps me looking at the subject. (Mary de Loyht-Arendt)
The flow of water and paint can be uncontrollable and crazy, but it is also freedom, an escape, therapy, joy, and, oh yes, very sensuous! (Angela Lynch)
Watercolor condenses time and consolidates experience. (Frank Marcello)
It's not easy to hide defeat – that's why watercolour makes nice people a bit crazy. Watercolour is full game-plan plus full attention. No sleeping at the switch like you sometimes do in oil and acrylic. (Donna Jo Massie)
Where oils lumber... watercolours prance. (Doug Mays)
Watercolor is like golf, every stroke counts... (Katie Wood McCloy)
To paint a successful watercolor it seems one must know what the finished result will look like before the first stroke of blossoming color is applied to the paper. (Dianne Middleton)
I had learned to harness ignorance with presumption. I was ready to become an unacknowledged watercolorist. (Henry Miller)
Watercolour could have been used more by the modernists. It is so direct, and when the white paper convention is accepted, so powerful, even brutal, that it would seem an ideal medium. (David Milne)
The effects of watercolour pigment freezing in layers on top of each other, the pooling of pigment at the edges of brush strokes and frost patterns all remain in the painting if sublimation can take place. Two factors required: freezing temperature and low humidity. (Alfred Muma)
-on watercolour...
And then you sock in the darks. (Malcolm Myers)
The good watercolors take a lifetime – plus a half an hour. (Toni Onley)
In watercolor, the experienced know that seeming chaos is usually the precursor to a strong painting... (Hilary Page)
Watercolour painting is notoriously difficult - so much depends on directness and speed, and certainty of intention. Tentative or fumbling touches are disastrous, for they cannot be obliterated easily. (Walter J. Phillips)
It is remarkable how very individual technique becomes in watercolour. Every man of personality finally arrives at a method peculiarly his own, as unique as his own fingerprint. (Walter J. Phillips)
There's so much versatility in watercolour. You allow the paint to roll around, and then drop in some colour, just one that takes your fancy, and watch it explode into a shape that morphs into something else... lots of fun. (Karen Phinney)
I am moved by the nature of the medium when I approach it with no preconceived ideas; the accidental happenings of the rapid, free-flowing action of watercolor when used wet-into-wet. (Carlton Plummer)
Watercolor is an alchemical medium - colors mixing with water, joining with it, being extended by it - creating new life where none had been before. (Joseph Raffael)
I always connect the figure to the background. Drawing is critical for the figure in watercolor. (Charles Reid)
-on painting a watercolour...
Make the best of an emergency. (John Singer Sargent)
Sometimes that 'final touch' is better left on the end of your brush. (Vivian Sathre)
-interview, Art of Watercolor, Dec, 2011...
Properly done, an acrylic watercolor is indistinguishable from a straight watercolor. Why use it? Permanence; straight watercolor can move when rewet, acrylic watercolor does not, which is useful in a variety of situations. (Nicholas Simmons)
When painting in watercolor - if it looks right when you put it down, it is wrong. It needs to look too strong, too dark so that it takes your breath away.Then when it dries it will be correct. (Charles Sluga)
Watercolour is a fascinating medium, ideally suited to the nuances of landscape yet also ideal for spontaneous free expression. (Tony Smibert)
A little amateur painting in water-color shows the innocent and quiet mind. (Robert Louis Stevenson)
Pouring watercolor on paper stimulates me to wrest from my subconscious the images that reflect my spirit. (Carol P. Surface)
Painting in watercolor is like walking a tight-rope; one must find perfect balance between what the paint wants to do and what the artist wants to do, or all is lost. (Mary C. Taylor)
There are no half measures when it comes to watercolour. Watercolour demands constant devotion. (Pierre Tougas)
Water benefits the ten thousand things and does not oppose them. (Lao Tzu)
You have to negotiate with this medium. It wants to have some say in the work. If you ignore it completely, it will scream 'Liar' at you. (Bill Vrscak)
Watercolour is a lifetime pursuit... mostly uphill. (Robert Wade)
Watercolor has its own way... it predicts the outcome of the shapes. (Annette Waterbeek)
Watercolor offers us, as artists, an inspired approach to the age-old process of making paintings sing. (Jeffrey J. Watkins)
With large flat brushes and plenty of water I approach the paper in slam-bang initial washes, and end with the caress of a butterfly wing. (Frank Webb)
The nature of watercolor... Its unpredictability, its sensuousness, the textures it seems to make of its own accord, and its legendary luminosity are some of the qualities often lauded. (Rachel Rubin Wolf)
-on watercolour...
The only virtue to it, is to put down an idea about what you feel at the moment. (Andrew Wyeth)
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