Watercolor taught me the hardest lesson in the studio: the paint has plans, and they're usually better than mine.

Follow the water

The pigment moves where the water wants. Fight it and you get mud. Follow it and you get the thing you didn't know you were painting.

Mistakes are the medium

In oil you paint over. In watercolor you let it dry and work the bloom in. Half my best pieces started as accidents I stopped fighting.

What it took

About two hundred washes, and one afternoon where I finally put the brush down and let the wet do the work.