Visual Aspect

You will notice that all of my paintings are painted with watercolors. Some times, in addition to watercolors, I also use ink. But the watercolors are always there, no matter what!..

My loyalty to watercolors can be easily explained: before stopping my choice on them, I have tried many other options: oils, pastels, gouache, acrylics, even charcoal… So, what I came up with is that no other type of colors gives you that feeling of lightweightness, transparency and lightness. Only watercolors have certain unique qualities, which make them so beautiful, but at the same time pretty tough to work with.

The technique of working with watercolors is very different from, let’s say, the one which is used while creating an oil painting: if you want to keep the transparency and clarity of colors while painting with watercolors, you can only put as little as 3-4 coats of color on top of each other. Otherwise, instead of beautiful and transparent colors all you are going to have are dirty and uneven spots of unidentified colors. That’s why many watercolor paintings you see around look dull and boring. Plus, when working with watercolors you are not allowed to make any mistake either – you cannot erase a trace of color left by your brush; you cannot also hide it under another coat of color because watercolors are transparent… Unlike, for example, oil, which gives much more freedom and flexibility when it comes to the number of color coating, which is, basically, unlimited and thus gives you an opportunity to correct some mistakes or flaws… So in a way, it’s much harder to reach perfection, stylistically and visually, when using watercolors.

That is also why in many countries original watercolors paintings are in high demand and valued even higher than oil paintings (especially these days when modern technology and numerous electronic devices allow to create premium quality copies of oil, but not watercolor, paintings).

I only use the finest watercolors, which are prepared in accordance with the ancient oriental recipes and imported from Japan, a country with the oldest professional watercolor tradition in the world. Japanese watercolors have always been renowned for their brilliance and transparency, as well as for their ability to retain their clean, crisp, brilliant characteristics over long periods of time.

Additionally, the watercolors being used in my paintings are water-soluble and non-toxic.