Celebrate Chaos!
featuring Andy Evansen
Wet-on-wet is a watercolor approach that Andy Evansen works on with many of his students. It is tricky because you are working with pigment on wet paper. In a way, you are relinquishing some control, which can be scary! We all want to control where everything goes in a painting. With wet-on-wet, it is easy for blooming and blossoming to happen with the paint. Many of his students immediately reach for paper towels to try to fix it! Andy tells his students to just let this happen. A beautiful aspect of watercolor is it is a fluid medium. Those passages where water and pigment are doing their own thing are what make watercolor so unique. In all other mediums (pastel, oil, pencil, acrylic), you have to work harder for loose edges and to get that mystery in a painting. With watercolor, it happens in seconds.
Recommended Exercise: Andy does this exercise with his students for free-form shapes, or rounder shapes. First, paint the light foliage of a tree. Before it’s dry, come in with thicker paint and drop its shadow in while the initial area of color (the light foliage) is still damp. This will give you a soft shadow edge.
Letting your watercolor create its own edges takes practice. Since we were kids, we have been praised for staying within the lines. Sometimes, controlling the medium is our default. Forget that! Andy and Gabor urge you to let the paint flow and make beautiful mistakes. Watercolor is controlled chaos. Embrace the chaos and have fun with it. The best-made plans are going to get foiled anyways. All mediums have their uniqueness, and whatever it is, we urge you to celebrate it in your paintings.
“Watercolor is controlled chaos. Embrace the chaos and have fun with it. The best-made plans are going to get foiled anyways. ”
There are many more ways to learn from Andy! Join him now:
To listen more on Embracing the Chaos, listen to Gabor and Andy on the Paint & Clay podcast here.