Of all the painting mediums, watercolor is one of the most simple in many ways. With watercolor you need very little to get started. Water, paper, a couple brushes and a small set of colors is all that is needed. There are no harsh solvents required to thin the color or to clean brushes. There is very little need for any type of additional mediums. With this in mind, it's one of the safest mediums, unless you choose to paint with hazardous pigments. All of these qualities have made watercolors very popular with amateur and professional artists around the world.
Although watercolor technique may seem simple, it can be one of the most difficult to master. Coming from an oil painting background I find watercolors to be extremely difficult and sometimes confusing. I often wonder if I had started with watercolors, would I find oils difficult and confusing? I hope that I can share some insight so you might not have the struggle with watercolors that I did.
A Brief History of Watercolors
Watercolors began to come into wide use during the late 15th century in Great Britain. Some of the earliest examples were done by Albrecth Durer. He produced a series of landscape paintings using water soluble paints on parchment. He used layers of transparent color to represent the dark tones, but for the light colors he used the tone of the paper.
Watercolors continued to develop until the late 18th century when several artists began to recognize the many possibilities of the medium. There are many artists who contributed to the development, but two stand out above the rest, J. M. W. Turner and John Sell Cotman. Turner was one of the first artists to experiment with washes, wiping out, scratching out, and incorporating body colors. While Cotman, who is considered one of the greatest artists of his time, demonstrated a sense of depth and control of the medium to produce some of the most unique works of art.
