Pictura acuarela
Watercolor means both a paint, obtained from pigment powder mixed with binder (usually gum arabic) and additives and diluted with water, as well as a painting technique on paper, or a work performed in this technique.
Unlike other techniques, such as gooseberries, which use watercolor paint mixed with cherry (lead carbonate, white), or oil painting, techniques that are based on color accumulation, watercolor is based on transparency, which leaves the background visible. white of the paper, which gives the watercolor works the luminosity and delicacy that characterizes them. Immediate drying requires rapid execution, which has long been a technique used in sketches and studies, but has gradually become a standalone technique. It was used extensively in illustrating manuscripts, but its flowering era in painting was the end of the eighteenth century and the beginning of the nineteenth century, especially in England, France and Russia.
The working techniques are wet on wet, wet on dry and dry on dry, each having its own particularities. In the works these techniques can be used and combined.
Watercolor works are more difficult than it seems.
Watercolor works are more difficult than it seems. The technique of watercolor is unique, because, unlike oil, water is an active factor in transporting and depositing colors. In addition, the appearance of the watercolor changes as it dries. Anticipating the movement of water and the final form of the work after drying requires experience. The pigment binder is largely absorbed by the support paper, which makes the pigment particles remain scattered on the surface of the paper like sand wires and are too little protected from the bleaching action of ultraviolet rays..
Watercolor colors do not have great coverage power, so you cannot correct mistakes by painting over. Sometimes it is necessary to remove a part of the color from the substrate by re-moistening and buffing it with an absorbent material (cloth, sponge or suction). Such maneuvers do not always succeed, which is an additional reason for fear for beginners. The usual stages of performing a work consist of executing a sketch barely visible in the pencil, then coloring the large surfaces starting with the lightest shades, and finally painting the details after the previous layers have dried.
