Cherry Blossoms

The great thing about watercolor is it paints itself (if you give it time) and does it much better than the painter. Hope that makes sense… Here’s a good example. Selina wanted to paint the cherry blossoms in Washington D.C. The largest mass of this painting is the cherry blossoms and the idea is not to paint each one. So how do we do that? This looks quite complicated but it’s the artist’s job to simplify and capture the essence of the scene. Spatter, splatter, throwing paint whatever you want to call it works really well for covering large areas with texture. If you spatter drops of creamy consistency paint and then sprinkle it with water from a spray bottle it blooms! You can do this several times with several variations of color and value. You can spatter mask at any time to retain the white of the paper or a tint you’ve already put down. It looks so real because the watercolor can paint this randomness or chaos much better then any of us could. All we mere mortals can do is try to give the illusion of what nature does naturally.