Feeling Progress

I spent the weekend at another USCAD class, Watercolour Painting. Even as a little girl, I was put off by watercolour paint. It grabbed the paper so quickly, you didn't have time to change your mind. No erasing. Layers seemed to make a big mess. When purchasing supplies for last year's Visual Arts Survey class, we were required to pick up a small amount of artist quality watercolour and I found a little Sennelier case with 8 colours in it. I poked and prodded around with it. And then I recalled that somewhere in my spare room there was a box of items my mother had given me that had belonged to my grandmother and her sister, Mildred, who owned and operated the Arlington Art Gallery in Saskatoon many years ago. In the box was an old set of watercolours. 

Everything turned around when I bought artist quality paper. The rough absorbent surfaces enabled me to pull and push the paint in ways I had never been able to previously. What a difference! All of a sudden I could see possibilities. I started to really enjoy working with the medium. I found a book in a second-hand book store on watercolour techniques and I worked through the book. I painted still life settings, photos, and from imagination.

I was making headway, but everything looked fussy, itchy, wiggly, unsettled. I registered for the Watercolour class. Half of a day in, the light bulb went oN.  

My instructor gave me a REALLY BIG paintbrush and said, paint only with this. 'WHAAT??', I thought.  But it worked. My paintings are much more loose and soft where they need to be. The eye can travel now from place to place where before it was dizzying. I am so much happier with what I am doing now, and I can't wait to get upstairs to my artspace. Now, if only the housework would do itself.

Bruce

11 x 15"

Watercolour on Paper