There is a saying over in the audiophile groups that it is always about the music, never about the equipment. I’m not really attached to any media, although I use all of them. When I start a painting, it already exists in my head, and I consider this the art, whether I ever paint it or not. I never know what media I will use before I finish, it could go any direction, so to me, media is not so much mixed as irrelevant. If I were to sacrifice my intended image for the sake of staying within the boundaries of some media, then it would cease to be about the music, become all about the equipment.
Having said that, it is fun sometimes to dabble in some specific media, for instance transparent watercolor, just for the technical challenge. I don’t consider these exercises my art, just kind of a hobby.
Concerning transparency, I don’t understand how transparent watercolor ever came to be considered traditional, all the earlier forms of watercolor, from cave paintings to oriental watercolor, which is opaque and mixed with a kind of glue, to the rise of watercolor as a serious media in the day of Turner, none of it was transparent. Most watercolorists found it hard to obtain good paper, most if was dark or tinted, which required opaque white for the highlights. Now, truly transparent watercolor is a unique and beautiful media, probably the most beautiful utilization of the media, (depending of course on the skill of the artist) and certainly deserving of it’s own organiizations and shows, but traditional? It’s just one take on the media, really doesn’t represent all of watercolor any more than gouache or drybrush or Chinese watercolor, and including elements outside the realm of transparent color certainly doesn’t make it mixed media.
-Floyd

I think that sometimes people can get upset over the question of what’s watercolor and what’s not because they see others drawing the line of what counts somewhere that excludes their own work or work they appreciate, and for reasons that may be based in opinion or that may make sense to one person and not to another. On the other hand, other people may want to define what they specialize in and not have that definition explosively expand to include many related but uniquely different things. So, I really don’t think a consensus can ever be reached on exactly where something is no longer watercolor because there’s too many grey areas in too many directions.

For example, watercolor is in the odd position in which the decision of whether a paint counts as watercolor or is something else is sometimes based on pigment rather than binder. Bind the pigment with oil and it’s oil paint, with egg yolk and it’s egg tempera, with acrylic emulsion and it’s acrylic, etc., but add a little white or chalk (technically a pigment) into a watercolor and it’s suddenly gouache, no change in binder needed. As far as I know this doesn’t happen in any other media, though I think there’s one or two Asian ones that are particular about particle size to get the right opacity. There is an appreciable difference between most watercolor and most gouache, but the same can be said of transparent and opaque pigments in oil paint.

On top of that, the binder in watercolor doesn’t even need to be gum arabic, nor was this always used. This is one medium with many unrelated binders. Even the many oils of oil paint are still all oil. Pure honey and nothing else can be used for watercolor. I’ve tried it and it works, but stays a little sticky if it’s used at full strength.

My own practice is that if I use any gouache then I say it’s “watercolor and gouache” rather than mixed media or water media, both of which are too vague. I don’t use ink but if I did it’d be “watercolor and ink.” If there’s three or more things it gets too long to list them all and I’d then call it mixed media.

The Philadelphia Water Color Society, one of the oldest and most prestigious in the U.S., has changed their major annual show to “works on paper”!

Oh but what about watercolor on ivory, or chicken skin? It seems in the 17th-19th centuries watercolor portrait miniatures were painted on many surfaces.

Hi@All

@CharM and @ V.Charter …the opinion from White Pen :).

When in Rome do as the Romans do….

First , British Classic

Pure Aquarell – Watercolor . The Ideal … this rules are clear.TWA.etc.

Second , Aquarell/Watercolor

Semi opaque , opaque Body color Gouashe and Egg-Tempra ,Lead Pen, Inks Chalks etc.

Aquarell/Watercolor painting in middle Europa starts out of Bookpaintings with Albrecht Dürrer , Lucas Chranach etc.. (~1472)! Aquarell + Inks at this times just carrys Artists Studies on composition and showing predrawings do customer .
15.-16.-17.-18.-19.-20 Centurys each brought out lots of famous Aquarellpainter and the Artworks “Aquarell” done with decent parts of Lead pen , ink , chalk , gouach ….in diverent styles,genre e.g. Landscape , Portrait etc. the viewer agree it´s Water pigments so it´s Aquarell .
Some example …
Eugene Delacroix 1843 Lion Head, Aqua.,Gouache,Lea. Pen
Eduard Manet 1871 Barrikade, Aqua.,Ink gray, + White.
Egon Schiele 1912 Prisonier, Aquarell, + Lead Pen.
Salvador Dali 1951 The Queen+Butterfly , Aquarell, + Collage!

As it looks it´s a talk about of redevelopment the wheel.:wink2:

Ink,Lead pen,graphite ,chalk and body white comes out of development old Master Artists over centurys and part of thousend of well know ” Aquarell / Watercolor ” pictures in hundreds of Museums.

So see the old Master in Aquarell/Watercolor , see and learn.:wave:

For new 21 jhd. developt colors and artmediums .

I see here a wide open gap to new interpretations , and a simular development as Albrecht Dürer when he starts his new Medium “Aquarell”.

As long as you keep the majority -Paper + pigment + water- ..it´s a Aquarell/Watercolor .
If it´s turn over to a Ink/Lead Pen drawing with color…:eek: it´s not.
Ok , when it turns into a Illustration ,then the important part the paper and his white´s is gone lost .

I´m not a purist but i like the classic transparent Watercolors and see it as the Top of the Rock , saddly is my painting technic not on the egde to create a impressive transparent painting..may sometime my journey be succsesful..:rolleyes: interim development with a bit lead pen ,Ink,Chalk,Gouache,Tempra & Co…:thumbsup: and Watercolorpaper + pigment.

Cheers W.P.

They have changed gouache formulations because gouache is not used any more that much from illustrators. Back in the past, ( but not that long ago.. lets say 25 years ago) all illustrations were done with gouache because the chalk that contains allowed such artworks to get better photographed with analogue cameras and then processed to films with repromasters, for offset printing purposes. Anyway.. gouache without chalk is more of a rather opaque watercolour. Unless chalk have been replaced with something else.. ( I don’t use gouache and I can’t tell you further details).

Marialena, I couldn’t agree more about the blurred lines of what constitutes a watercolour. But, the fact that we can include a highlight or a penned line on a watercolour and it’s still just that, but adding more than the highlight or line and it becomes mixed media. That’s the grey zone.

It becomes mixed media when the whole surface of your painting is coloured with different kind of painting media.

Ok.. let me say it differently. When you indicate that a painting is made with the one or another medium, what you indicate is the colours that were used and not the rest.
A pencil drawing coloured with watercolour paints is a watercolour painting and not a mixed media painting even if you have draw the whole universe underneath your colouring.

Same with ink..
Carl Larsson, the renowned Swedish watercolorist, used extensively ink on his paintings.

Check this painting of his.
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Carl_Larsson-Lath%C3%B6rnet.jpg

Heavily inked but if you scroll down you’ll see in the description that this painting is considered as a watercolour painting. ( from the museum that there’s exhibited).

Now if some watercolour societies want to ignore such examples and keep on insisting on purism and other such nonsenses.. what to say..

Charm honestly I’m sick and tired with labels, rules and “musts”. And what makes me getting completely mad is that all these things are applied from people that don’t practice painting, don’t live from their paintings, but just theorize and put rules and labels to each anyone and everything existing..

Virgil, you’ve opened up a whole universe of complexity concerning the various manifestations of art. The root of the problem is the inadequacy of language. The word “art” just doesn’t stretch far enough. At the lowest level, art is anything intended to be art. Nobody can deny that a child’s drawing is art. At the highest level, it’s anything that pushes the boundaries of what what the individual, or the entire human race is capable of creating or expressing, whether or not it was intended to be art or not. A great violin maker would have to be considered an artist, for his achievement, even though he only considered himself a craftsman. In between are a thousand different shades of art, motivated by different objectives, money, religion, recreation, meditation, self realization, social interaction, grief, the need to use up a warehouse full of art supplies. In a perfect world, every artist would have an entirely different definition of art, giving us a world of variety. Unfortunately there are enough like thinkers to create cliques and controversy. “Fine Art”? While it sounds good, it’s just another shade of art. I think of it as something intended to push the limits, extent the barriers, redefine. Whether it succeeds or not. Great illustration is better than bad fine art. What does all of this have to do with the mixed media question? Well, media driven art is another shade of art, where the objective is pushing the limits of the medium. Not all art is media driven- sometimes it’s just about getting the image in your head into tangible form, whatever it takes. Again, it’s about the inadequacy of language, because we can’t have several thousand words for several thousand artists take on their medium. So we mostly call it watercolor.
I’ve done things like the little bulldog, and the wonder and quirk was mostly in the joy of cashing the check. Felt used afterwards.
-Floyd

Yep, Char’s question about what’s mixed media (and what’s not), and mine about what’s art (and what’s not) is definitely a can of worms.

That said, as long as we can keep the conversation civil (and comprehensible), these are important questions to share and discuss, because if we don’t do it, who will?

For those of us who teach (and who paint) these are questions we encounter over and over. So discussion is a big help. Besides, we all learn from each other, don’t we?

Sling stuff (gently),
Virgil