Understanding Watercolor

Watercolor paints are one of my favorite mediums to use when I am painting. I love the rich translucent vibrant luminous colors it produces and the ability to layer from light to dark and the soft and airy quality it can produce. There are a lot of unique qualities that make watercolor paints so desirable and popular today.

Watercolor paints are composed of fine organic and non-organic pigments with gum arabic as the binder to hold the pigments suspended in water. They come in dry pans that can be activated with water and liquid tubes. Some of the most popular professional brands are Daniel Smith and Winsor & Newton. I personally love using Daniel Smith's professional paints for my paintings. I just love the variety of rich vibrant colors they produce and their great lightfastness ratings. Watercolors’ unique qualities that make them so fascinating to work with are transparency, opacity, granulation, staining effect, liftability, and lightfastness.

Transparency means the light is shown through reflecting the white of the paper substrate, whereas, opaque blocks the light from shining through.

Granulation is an interesting quality. Watercolor paints are made up of organic and non-organic pigments. Depending on the size of the particles and if they are light or heavy decides how the pigments separate from the water and whether it will produce a granulated or smooth appearance. Smaller pigment particles flow evenly onto the paper. Granulated pigments produce a sedimentary appearance. It appears ‘grainy’ and produces texture which many artists love about watercolor paints and they believe it adds interest to their paintings.

Each watercolor pigment is given ratings on its staining ability, lifting ability, and lightfastness. Staining qualities determine the paint pigments’ ability to penetrate the fibers of paper. Staining pigments stain the paper and cannot be easily rewet and lifted. Non-staining pigments have great lifting qualities when to they are rewet and allow the artist to remove or lighten the color because the pigment sits on the surface of the paper.

An awesome alternative substrate to watercolor paper is aquabord. It has awesome lifting abilities and that is one of my favorite qualities about Aquabord.

As for watercolor paintings, artists and art collectors are advised to hang their watercolor paintings in indirect sunlight otherwise it definitely can cause the colors to fade over time depending on the lightfastness. To minimize fading, watercolor manufacturers are mindful of the longevity of their watercolor paints which is dependent upon the lightfastness of each pigment known as fugitive and non-fugitive pigments. Fugitive pigments have poor lightfastness ratings and fade quickly and artists try avoiding these pigments, however, there is hope for the artists and the art collectors. There are non-fugitive pigments that have good to awesome lightfastness ratings and they will not fade over time. As an artist, I pay close attention to their lightfastness ratings when choosing colors that I want to purchase and incorporate into my paintings.

So there you have the basic understanding of why an artist would choose watercolor as a medium. It produces quite different results than oils and acrylics and is not solely dependent upon brushes and brushstrokes to produce a beautiful painting. Each medium has its staple binder; oils use linseed oil, acrylics use polymer emulsions, and most watercolors use gum arabic. Overall, watercolors offer a unique and beautiful medium for artists to create their masterpieces.

Now that you have a better understanding of watercolor, what draws you to watercolor paintings? Which of my watercolor paintings speaks to you and what do you like about it? Don't forget to leave a comment below, I would love to hear from you!