Felix Scheinberger - Urban Watercolor Sketching: A Guide to Drawing, Painting, and Storytelling in Color

Copyright 2011, 2014 by Felix Scheinberger and Verlag Hermann Schmidt Mainz

All rights reserved.
Published in the United States by Watson-Guptill Publications, an imprint of the Crown Publishing Group, a division of Random House LLC, a Penguin Random House Company, New York.
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Originally published in hardcover in Germany as Wasserfarbe fr Gestalter by Verlag Hermann Schmidt Mainz, in 2011. This translation arranged with Verlag Hermann Schmidt Mainz. Translation by Faith Ann Gibson.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Scheinberger, Felix.
[Wasserfarbe fr Gestalter. English]
Urban Watercolor sketching : a guide to drawing, painting, and storytelling in color / Felix Scheinberger. First American Edition.
pages cm
Includes bibliographical references and index.
1. Watercolor paintingTechnique. I. Title.
ND2420.S32313 2014
751.422dc23
2013019316

Trade Paperback ISBN: 978-0-7704-3521-9
eBook ISBN: 978-0-7704-3524-0

Design by Nicola Aehle, Felix Scheinberger, and Katy Brown

v3.1

When we think of watercolor, many of us immediately picture sentimental landscapes and paintings of ruins and picturesque scenes. Although eighteenth- and nineteenth-century English artists established watercolor as a sophisticated painting medium, it often yields strangely negative reactions from contemporary artists. An entire generation quickly relegates it to a hobbyists medium.

Yet watercolor is far more than an amateurs medium, as it requires intense concentration and practice. Once its put on paper, mistakes are difficult to remedy, and only when it is applied with confidence does it have a truly successful effect. Watercolor involves a certain degree of uncertainty, but it also teaches us to see.

Watercolor was the first technique to free the artist from the studio because it could easily be taken outdoors. It required no tubes, easels, canvases, or similar implements, only a box of paints and paper. Even today, watercolor is a tool that frees us from the studio, our laptops, and countless charging cables.

Watercolor is, however, not just a technique; it is almost an attitude. Watercolor always does what it wants. In a way, it is willful and anarchical. Therefore, for me, the secret to using watercolor to create pictures lies in striking a balance between control and letting go. Pictures are often only really good when they surprise uswhen they reveal what we sensed and felt, but could not have consciously expressed. If we sacrifice the right amount of control in the artistic process, watercolors inherent qualities begin to work to our advantage.