As I said in my last post, I took a class in experimental watercolours last weekend. It was truly amazing. The teachers were great
– check their work here: Gunnel Moheim (click “akvarell” and then “titta på bilder”) and AnnMari Löf. They made everybody feel comfortable with playing around with the colours without necessarily reaching a finished result, trying new things, see new possibilities and gave us lots of tips and hints along the way. I loosened up a lot, finally dared to let watercolours do what they want on the paper without trying to control everything.
I learned a lot, most of all how little I know about
watercolours… I realized that I need to practice, practice, practice, plus I need to find out a lot more about pigments and their properties.
Gunnel and AnnMari shared a lot of great techniques, like painting with rags, printing with various materials, painting through nets, pouring paint on the paper, and lots more. They filled a table with stuff to use in our work; rags, plastic, wood, pins, cloth, metal, packing materials, etc, and I really enjoyed experimenting with all their fantastic techniques. (Yes, we did use brushes too, occasionally…)
One thing that I discovered, is that I´ve been much too 
afraid to use WATER. Water is key, lots of water. That´s how you get the pigments to work in their own special ways, not just the colours. Some pigments bite, some make lines when they dry, some float around and some sink into the pools of the paper grain. Fun, fun, fun!
I feel like a total beginner again, and I´m itching for this work week to end to get some time to practice!
The images are all watercolours in techniques that I would never have dreamed up on my own, on watercolour paper of different grains. They are not in any way finished, they are just details of stuff I made during and after the class. Have no idea how big they are, either, and I´m too lazy to go measure them all. 🙂