Drawn TO SIMPLICITY
Most watercolour painters who favour a looser technique also seek to produce a final painting that is very much simpler than the original subject. By “simpler”, I mean a less cluttered and detailed appearance – something that is often quite difficult to achieve in practice.
Creating a simpler composition is not simply a case of leaving things out (although this may well be part of it). Instead, it is the much more nebulous idea of painting a chosen subject so that it appears to be very quickly and economically executed, while still suggesting the detail that is effectively no longer there.
As I will show you in this article, one sure way to help this process along is to use a pencil sketch of the original subject, drawn in situ, as
