Paint what you see
“Paint what you see, not what you know” is a fundamental principle in representational art. That does not mean it is the only way to approach painting. Pablo Picasso is said to have remarked:…
Category: philosophy
Why are earth colors so different?
The image above, the header image for this text, shows various swatches of raw umber. Earth colors often differ radically between manufacturers. Colors with the same name can look completely different depending on who…
Get Good at Watercolor
There is only one way to become good at something, whatever it may be, and that is to do it often and regularly. No one has ever become good at playing the piano or…
Don’t write with a brush
Why do almost all beginners paint a thin line using a bunch of tiny brushstrokes?The answer is actually pretty obvious: we’re used to writing with a pen but not with a brush. When we…
Stop Rubbing
Since many of my students – both beginners and those who have painted for years – tend to rub watercolor paint onto the paper, I assume this is quite a common habit. By “rubbing”…
What the Hell Is a Swatch?
If you’re interested in watercolor painting and start looking for information on YouTube, chances are you’ll come across someone carefully painting watercolor in small squares. As far as I know, there’s no real term…
Signing your painting
Artists haven’t always signed their work. The role of the artist began to shift during the Renaissance, when ideas of individual creativity and the artist’s status as an intellectual rather than a craftsman became…
Information on paints
This text is about Swedish online shops with artist materials. It is probably not interesting for visitors from other countries, or this problem is more general and applies to you as well. Swedish online…
Color mixing chart
Do an image search on ”mixing watercolors” or similar, and you will get results that look like the image above. Diagrams of different watercolors mixed in a grid, which I’m sure takes a long…
