What is Zen watercolor?

 'Zen watercolor', as I call it, can be seen as drawing and painting at the same time. It is a very intuitive way of painting that requires a high level of concentration. Like in other Zen art traditions, you try to paint 'in the moment', without hesitation and without any doubt. You just follow the flow and let it happen, which is quite easy as watercolor has a lot of unexpected and unintended effects that forces you to let go of the result anyway.

Blind contour drawings, based on the Zen drawing technique, can be a perfect bases for a watercolor painting and by drawing very thin pencil lines, they will become your guidelines for the painting. Furthermore those subtile pencil lines will not interfere with the transparent watercolor too much. You can probably imagine that dark harsh lines will still be seen und er transparent watercolor paint.


Method


I follow a few simple rules once I have decided to start painting, maybe they can help you too: First and foremost, the most important thing you need to do is to choose something you really want to draw. If you love what you see and want to draw, it will make the whole painting experience that much easier. I also have an idea of what you want to focus on in the painting and what colors you want to use.

Secondly: You must really feel like you want to start painting, just like an athlete is ready to run before the race starts. So when you have that inner feeling of being ready to paint, make sure all the materials you need are within reach, so you do not have to interrupt the process whilst painting. Just like an athlete doesn't want to tie his shoelaces in the middle of a race.

Experience


Experience is key when working with watercolor, and the more you experiment, the more feeling you get with the material. Take time to get familiar with the way your paper absorbs water and paint; experiment with brush sizes and with mixing colors. You will find that even though water flows where ever it wants to go, you will still be able to create beautiful effects. Also allow yourself to make mistakes, because this is the easiest and fastest way to learn the secrets of this technique. If you do, you will discover how much fun it is to use Zen drawing and Zen watercolor to create whatever it is you want to draw or paint.

If you want to have an idea of how I work, take a look at this video below of a kingfisher painting that I did. It took me about 30 minutes to paint. If you look closely, you will see that I work in layers: sometimes I work 'wet on wet' (new paint layer flows on the wet first layer) and sometimes I work 'wet on dry' (the  new layer will not flow on the dry first layer).

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