Painting of Gourds

This is a watercolor painting of gourds I did last week. I like painting gourds because they seem wondrous and magical to me, yet somewhat monstrous -- curious freaks of nature, with their odd colors and strange, twisted shapes and markings. They also fascinate me because their landscapes are contorted, alien, bizarre -- like small villages dotting ravines and crevasses of dark green and pale gold. Watercolor is an amazing medium. A lot of people think of it as uncontrollable and hard to manage, but the key is in the water itself. If you use very little water on hot pressed watercolor paper, the paper won't warp or wrinkle. The flat paper holds the color well and it is possible to take a long time to explore the slow build-up of mass and color, almost in the same way as oils or acrylics. The beauty of watercolors is that they can be used as translucent layers, to build up colors, and they do have a certain crisp delicacy that is hard to achieve with other media.