Ever So Gently

If there is one thing I know about myself it’s that when I learn something, I am going to look for that exact same pattern somewhere else. Because I know that everything is connected. So when I learn something from my art, nine times out of ten, I am going to step back and ponder how that applies to life.

The one thing that watercolor teaches me over and over is how to let myself be surprised. I think this can be said about any art form or creative practice but there is something about watercolor that has especially taught me how to let go of control.

Water is a difficult element to master. One of the main components of truly grasping the art of watercolor is getting a feel for how much water you’re working with. How wet the paper is vs. how much water is in your brush. If there is too much on the paper, your colors will slip. If there is too much on the brush, you’ll get blooms. If there isn’t enough water on the paper and too much on the brush, blooms. If the paper is too dry and the brush is too dry, your pigment won’t saturate the paper and it acts more like acrylic paint. Which is when we can miss the magic of what makes watercolor truly special.

There have been points in my journey where the pigment to water ratio just clicked and I was able to work wet into wet through nearly the entire piece. Getting those really soft lines that all blur together is exactly the dreamy quality I love. But I didn’t used to paint like this. When I started, I used watercolor more like acrylic, I made my paintings photo-like. They were predictable that way. But that wasn’t how I wanted to paint. I wanted that soft, ethereal quality, unique to watercolor.

I also used to sketch more heavily when I started painting. I needed that guide to keep me on track. But somewhere in the last six years I noticed that the underlying sketch and my wet into wet technique were fighting each other. The sketch was keeping me from being free with my brush and painting intuitively. So at one point I started going in blind. Blank paper, a loose mental image, leaning fully on intuition.

Magic. Pure magic. Joy in process, and those soft, dreamy lines I had always wanted to achieve. All because I threw the plan out the window and decided to just let watercolor do what watercolor does best — it’s own thing.

The piece I created this week titled “Ever So Gently” is a perfect example of this. I was sitting in my porch studio, staring across the street at a blue sky and the way the red pines stood next to dense hardwoods.

I didn’t get down every tree trunk and branch just so. I painted the way it felt to hear the aspen leaves quiver in the wind. What it was like to see a flock of geese just graze the tips of the red pines. I let the sky melt. I wanted the definition to come through in the trees more than anything. But ever so gently.

I know this lends itself elsewhere too. Life is also exponentially more incredible when I let intuition take the reigns. When I let my body show me where she wants to go. When I allow for the unknown stuff to remain mysterious rather than something I need to figure out or make it a problem I need to solve.

Part of this human experience is literally not knowing what is ahead. I have been reminded constantly lately to let myself get curious in the liminal. That I don’t always get to figure it all out, and trying to do just that zaps my energy. Things feel a whole lot better if I can just let my wrist get loose, stop sketching everything out the and watch the colors and shapes unfold before my eyes.