Some of my thoughts on watercolor painting gear

Painting in the rain - with as little gear as possible

I have finally gotten old enough to admit to the “Less is more”, that they kept telling us on the architect school, where the old architect professors, with shaking hands,  looked at watercolors as old friends in a way, that I think,  no one will ever look at AutoCAD.

watercolor sketch from a hike in Sweden - Kullaberg

Most of those old architects had  spend years sketching and painting outdoors  in the days before it all went digital around year 2000. And I was lucky enough to be, – maybe the last generation there,  who learned the basics of sketching, ink and watercolor, before it all disappeared.

Ever since that time  I have loved my watercolor gear and the simple fact that all you need is just a few colors, some paper, water and a brush… and most of all that the changes of weather, the wind, sun and temperature is suddenly something you have to take into account – in a way that is very different from working on a computer screen.

My Equipment:

Snapshot of my gear on a hike

Easel
A few times I bring an easel – but most of the time it just gets in the way, easier just to sit on the backpack. When I bring it I have a metal type one that easy can be tilted in the right angle for the water to flow… or stop flowing.

Colors
I normally use the small winsor&Newton half pans colors but as I run out of the originals I normally use tube-color in the same artist quality of the brands I can get my hands on: Rembrandt, Maimeri, etc. – I just fill up the pans as it is much cheaper. And I use as many different onces as I can grab.

using layers of color and the white of the paper

Brushes

The one place I am not compromising is with my brushes – it dosn´t have to be the series 7, winsor newton, ( I gave up on those as I realized my 4 years old daughter liked to use them when I didn’t look. ) but I stay with sable brushes as I have never met anything that can compare, and I only use them for watercolor as ink will destroy them very fast.

Papers
For papers, I also use whatever is thick and won’t darken if exposed to years of sunlight, mostly in A4 size. Cotton paper is nice, but I finally realized that it is not going to make me a better artist. Most of the time I work in papers between 200 and 300grams.

Moleskine Sketchbooks
I am still trying to figure out why I like the Moleskine books so much, (moleskine.com). There is quite a lot of hype around them, and it might be a bit like all the other Italian things – you don’t quite know why are so great.

To my experience, they are not that easy to work with, but I still end up buying them… even though they are very expensive – don’t quite know why I have gotten so attached to them.
But there is one very nice thing about them – and that is that there are a lot of on-line places, communities and web-sites to look at other peoples work in Moleskine books – just take a look at this one for a start.

sketches in a lined moleskine book (classic)

Water
I have been using small Nalgene bottles (plastic bottles)  for a few years now as they lock very good, they work perfect and are cheap and unbreakable, I use the 125ml/4 oz size,  but you can get them in lots of different sizes.

Stuff I gave up on…

I used to carry around expensive sitting chairs, chairs that combined as backpacks, easels that had a small room for papers and colors, large amounts of Canson Arches cotton papers (outrageously expensive and very addictive) and other fancy stuff.

But then I saw some of the works of the old watercolor masters that were so incredible much more experienced and better than me – and the equipment they used, looked so simple and worn out… So I am finally starting to understand what they tried to teach me for years on the Academy – that less is more – at least when it comes to painting watercolors.

One of the watercolor artists I admire

Watercolor by John Singer Sargent

And to see how far one can reach in watercolors – check out this detail in a watercolor by John Singer Sargent (1856-1925) – one of the Worlds All time best Watercolor painters.

So, by now I  try to minimize my gear, using less and less, as it is much easier to concentrate on painting when I don’t have to spend time picking between ten different kind of papers, brushes and colors… ( colors is the only place I have decided to carry a lot of different, as they are all unique and their flow, transparency, way they dry up etc. are so important.