How do watercolors actually work?

The process of putting paint on paper always feels magical to me--when other people do it. Watching a painter apply random smears and swipes of color on a piece of paper until a waterfall or a face or an entire cityscape suddenly emerges, as though this new world was always there and she was just stripping away a shroud: chills prickle my neck and I'm hypnotized.

When I do it, it's a dang mess. If I can even think of something to paint, with all that white paper staring up at me. I don't know how to see what I'm looking at in a way that transmits down my arm to an unwieldy bristle-ended appendage.

I love making washes--they make great backgrounds and desktops, as well as bookmarks and shopping list paper. It's very satisfying to make page after page of pretty colors. But I want to move beyond happy accidents and try painting on purpose.

How fortunate to live in these days of YouTube tutorials. There are so many pigment magicians out there who are really good teachers. There's a lovely woman who goes by the name makoccino who makes beautiful videos about watercolor and acrylic painting that are just a pleasure to watch. I actually signed up for an online class with another painter named Laura Horn, who also works in watercolors and acrylics. There are hundreds of other painters out there to learn from. I've mostly just watched up to this point. But during the coronavirus shutdown I have started to do.

For starters, my vocabulary is expanding. I can now use terms like "water control" and "glazing" with some kind of confidence, and say "cauliflower" like it's a bad thing.

I really liked the waves this one guy was painting, and the skies that a different painter was doing, so I've been trying to follow their directions, with, mmmm, slight success, if you count actually setting my fears aside and putting some actual paint on some actual paper as success. These were done in this order on different days. They bear a slight resemblance to the examples, so yay.

I think there's evidence of some small gaining of understanding. And it was fun! Two of the classes I watched: waves and lavender field. I can't remember the one about clouds and skies.

Long ago I read a book about a kingdom where music was forbidden. The magic created by the music was draining away, and kingdom was dying as a result. To save the it, two young heroes quested to find the magic Song that would bring the kingdom back to life. Amazingly enough, they did find it. When the time came to sing it, though, the singer was so stressed out by running from evil music haters that they couldn't remember the song. The other quester had a revelation: Just sing anything. Any song would save the kingdom. Every song grew magic. You just had to sing. It was always in everybody's power.

Just put the dang paint on the dang paper.