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The Experiment

Despite what many non-watercolor artists say, watercolor can be versatile.  You can make mistakes and you can correct them (to a certain extent).

Ripped up gauze detail.
I like to think of mistakes in watercolor as a challenge.  Yeah, I may have ruined what I had had in mind, but the mistake now pushes me to think differently.  How can I incorporate this "mistake" into a 'happy accident'.  

Since I am creator, I can now take that mistake and mold it.  How can I use it to create something new.

Hence the experiment.  Sounds like a bad B-movie, LOL!


Colors used:
French Ultramarine Blue
Quinacridone Gold
Quinacridone Red

In my latest watercolor, I wanted to play around with different textures and see what I could come up with.  

The final piece.

The first image shows the texture I used at the bottom of my paper.  It's just some gauze that I ripped up.  I put it in place and then saturated it with water and color.  When dried, you'll get a very cool textural pattern.  If you don't let it 100% dry, (like I did here), you can brush out certain patterns and add more color.  What this does it just softens the patterns hard edges.  You can then mold it to how you want.   

At the top, I played with placing cling film into my colors and letting it dry.  My mistake here was letting it dry all the way.  I was left with hard edges you can clearly see.  I did not like it and I couldn't easily lift away those hard edges either.  

This left me feeling like I should crumple up my paper and throw it away.  

But, I just couldn't do that.  I walked away for an hour.  When I came back, my brain finally kicked in and reminded me that this was just an experiment.  

I thought of the way tree branches looked against a colorful sky.  It kind of reminds me of stained glass.  The tree branches being the lead.  I wasn't exactly successful in recreating that, but non-the-less, I think my experiment was a success in making me think out-of-the-box.  

Those are the best kinds of mistakes.

What do you think?  Have you ever had a similar situation that turned out better than you expected?
I'd love to hear your feedback!

If you like what you see, follow me on social media:
Instagram: Rebecca L. Davis







      

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