End of Spring Paint Out

Gordon MacKenzie is a master at watercolor and he had this to say about the medium in his book The Watercolorist’s Essential Notebook: “…a word of caution: Watercolors are not for the faint-of-heart but for those willing to explore and experiment, knowing that they risk failure, knowing that each piece of paper will not end as a masterpiece”. To that I raise my glass and cheer “Here, Here!”  because this elusive medium, more then any other, exposes your ignorant pigment-otry “faster then green grass through a goose.” Truly when it comes to watercolor there is nowhere to hide. Unlike acrylic’s ability to easily paint over your unhappy mistakes, unchartered layering in watercolor gives you a dirty ol’ mud-bath.

Linda Holcomb is another watercolor painter and fellow blogger who like me, experienced almost two decades of inactivity from one of her creative passions. So when she issued a call for a Paint Out to celebrate the end of Spring I decided to join in the fun. She suggested that our inspiration be taken from a line in an E. E. Cummings poem that reads “the leaping greenly spirits of trees” and to express ourselves in our medium of choice

I choose Linda and Gordon’s medium for this challenge because I’m a wanna-be watercolorist. Boy do I ever wish watercolor distributors would label their expensive little paint tubes with the paints main characteristics. Manipulating tinted water that is sometimes transparent, sometimes semi-transparent, sometimes opaque, sometimes high-staining, and sometimes low staining, with effectively a blind fold on, makes me throw my hands in the air feeling defeated before I’ve even begun.

To Gordon I give you my un-masterpiece and to Linda, I give you my greenly tree who in spirit at least, is about to take a leap. What the heck, failures are worth celebrating too. For those of you who think that perhaps I’m being humble about my attempt, check out Gordon’s paintings to see what a real watercolorist’s work looks like. Also check out Linda’s post to see her Paint Out results. Everyone who contributed work to the challenge can be found linked in the comments section.

© Dana Aubrey