Artist Nancy Barch totally immerses herself in her art. She is a prolific painter who can work non-stop for ten hours at a time. As we watch her paint she describes the challenge that comes with painting in watercolor. There are so many aspects to watercolor the mixing, the pigment, the brushes, the paper. You have to be sensitive to all the materials before any control can take place. The papers and the paints are critical because they provide the richness and quality that you see in the finished painting. When she starts to paint the very first thing she does is draw. “The more you draw the better you’ll paint. ”She says that it is very important to know from start to finish where you are going. Once you know that you are ready to paint in watercolor. Nancy believes that shape and value (the lights and darks) are where every painting should begin. First you concentrate on the shape, then the values. The color is incidental. “If I draw an elephant the right shape and I paint him the right values of lights and darks, you will know that it is an elephant. If I paint him purple, you will still know he is an elephant. Color isn’t as important as we make out it to be.” |
