This morning I led some of the members of my Makers Art Group in watercolor painting on Zoom. We began by simply mixing colors and making marks with them dry paper, then added other colors on top and a few splatters. It was a way to play with paint, brush, water, and paper.
Making marks, mixing colors, experimenting with paper, brush, paint, and water.
Then on wet paper, we painted an entire sheet of paper yellow and then quickly before it dried painted a single green line across it (see top image). Watching the colors mix and spread feels like magic to me. I never tire of seeing how watercolor moves and mixes. It’s not easy to control watercolor paint. Especially when you’re just beginning to learn how to use it, the pigment goes where it wants to go. In fact, the thing that I love best about it is the way watercolor paint surprises me time and time again.
Play is our brain’s favorite way of learning.
— Diane Ackerman
For me it’s a perfect art medium because I find I am willing to play without intention much of the time. When I paint for the sheer joy of exploring this medium it’s magical. If I have a specific intention in mind and it doesn’t work out, I still try to hold this idea of play.
Along with play, a dollop of beginner’s mind helps, as well as a generous serving of acceptance and patience, and a serious willingness to be persistent in playing and practicing again and again.
The three “P’s” crucial to my creative practice are: Play, Patience, and Persistence.
“The essential ingredients for creativity remain exactly the same for everybody: courage, enchantment, permission, persistence, trust—and those elements are universally accessible. Which does not mean that creative living is always easy; it merely means that creative living is always possible.”
― Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear
When was the last time you played with art? Perhaps you’d like to try some watercolor play today.
May you walk in beauty.
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