Make the best of an emergency. John Singer Sargent

John Singer sargent, “Abandoned Boats” (detail), watercolor

Like just about everyone else in this new age of Coronavirus, I’ve been practicing physical distancing for the last few weeks. For me that’s meant staying inside my home and studio around the clock, with occasional walks in nearby woods and fields—which is a daily routine not too different from the way I usually live.

Susan Abbott, “Foggy Morning at Kate’s”, watercolor

One big change has been the cancellation of all my travel plans, including three workshops I had coming up this spring. Like many teachers, I’ve taken to the internet and am now offering online painting instruction and art mentoring, and I’m really enjoying working with students from all around the world.

Long distance teaching means that I also need to do some long distance demos, so in this post you’ll find my first-ever instructional video. (I’m trying to follow the same advice I give to students, and not paralyze myself with perfectionism while trying to learn a new skill—so that explains any production shortcomings!)

Winslow Homer, “The Adirondack Guide”, watercolor

Which brings us to wet-in-wet watercolor washes, also a technically difficult endeavor that can bring out the perfectionist in us. Any of you who have tried it know that watercolor is a fickle and difficult medium. That’s because watercolor is all about water, and water doesn’t easily take to being controlled.

And watercolor is unforgiving of our mistakes. Because of its transparency, its way of floating like mercury and drying like stained glass, in this kind of painting there aren’t many places to hide.

Charles Reid, “Bermuda beach”, watercolor

Drawing mistakes in watercolor are permanent, unless they can be painted over—but painting over one color with another always darkens and never lightens in this medium, because it lacks the opacity of oil or acrylic paint.

Correcting an error often means going down the slippery slope of ever-murkier color, into the manure-like hue that we in the trade call “mud”.

Susan Abbott, “Mud Season”, watercolor and graphite

So why would a painter put up with a way of working that presents so many pitfalls? The answer is that watercolor’s vices are her virtues. Her very unpredictability and unwillingness to be controlled make her endlessly seductive and engaging.

The water we try to manipulate forces us to stay in the moment, the pigment that drives us crazy by drying in unpredictable ways also keeps us guessing and adapting to whatever happened on the paper a moment before.

Watercolor. like every other medium, creates an image, a still life or landscape or figure painting with forms we feel we could touch, and space we can imagine entering.

Susan Abbott, “House and Inlet, Maine”, watercolor

But more than other mediums, watercolor is about what happens on the surface—for example, the way the colors can mingle and settle on paper like quicksilver in a rain puddle.

That technique of wet-in-wet, of mixing color with the brush on paper, presents watercolor at both its most difficult and most lovely. Although not all watercolorists use wet-in-wet, those that do can’t imagine not having it in their arsenal.

Charles Hawthorn, “Sky Study”, watercolor

The key to becoming more confident with wet-in-wet is practice. Getting a feel for how much water to have on your brush and how to interplay the colors on the paper takes time and repetition.

So pour yourself a glass of wine, turn some old paintings over so you can practice on their backsides, and try wet-in-wet.

Start with just two colors. Transparent pigments are easiest to blend, so a good practice pair is Ultramarine Blue and Burnt Sienna. I demonstrate in the video below.

Wet-in-wet is very useful for painting spheres, cones and cylinders, which as Cezanne said are the most common forms found in landscape, still life, and the figure.

In the watercolor below, I’m using a triad of blue, red and yellow to turn the cylinders of the drape, and create light and shadow on the sphere.

Wet-in-wet with this primary triad of red, blue and yellow is especially useful to practice. The red and blue mix to purple (or “purpleish”, depending on which red and blue you use) and purple is complementary to the yellow leg of the triad.

Susan Abbott, “Crystal Lake”, watercolor

When you mix complements like yellow and purple, you get a neutralized color, but with hints of the pure colors of the triad.

This creates a “glow” in the watercolor wash that you don’t get when you paint one layer on top of another.

And the wet-in-wet triad also helps to create a movement of color around the composition.

Susan Abbott, Demo of wet-in-wet with burnt sienna and ultramarine blue (left) and triad of ultramarine blue, alizarin crimson, and hansa yellow (right)

After decades of attempting wet-in-wet watercolor, when I put brush to paper I still never know exactly where I’m going to end up. After all, water is an element with a mind of its own.

I like to think I’m in charge when I’m moving pigment from here to there with my sable brush—but I’m really just keeping up, one step ahead of the tide, with a headstrong, beautiful medium.

Susan Abbott, “Vermeer Study”, watercolor

Your comments are welcome below!

The Hows and Whys of Wet-in-Wet