History of WC
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(Excerpts from ART HARDWARE: The Definitive Guide to Artists’ Materials, by Steven Saitzyk © 1987) Although the use of watercolors dates back to prehistoric times, it was not until about A.D. 500 that watercolor painting came to be considered a fine art, when Chinese poet-painters helped it evolve from being primarily a decorative craft. In the West, Albrecht Durer (1471-1528) has been credited with upgrading the level of watercolors. Primarily a printmaker, he was looking for a way to color areas of his prints and ended up using a combination of transparent and opaque (gouache) watercolors to produce colored drawings. Chalk was often added to a watercolor to give a stronger and fuller quality. This explains the flat and linear appearance of his watercolors, since opaque watercolors do not readily lend themselves to shading. J. M. W. Turner (1775-1851) was a technical innovator who took full advantage of the newly developed synthetic mineral pigments that were beginning to find their way into the artist's palette. He applied these new transparent and opaque watercolors with sponges, rags, and knives, as well as with brushes. Despite his use of opaque color and even pastel on his watercolor paintings, he is still considered part of the original English (transparent) watercolor school. The French Impressionists who followed the English school developed an even more dramatic look by taking advantage of the now numerous synthetic mineral pigments, and by often applying them unmixed. Today, watercolor is still heavily dominated by the principles of the English watercolor school. Consequently, the term "watercolor" has come to mean transparent watercolor and opaque watercolor is now called "gouache." Modern watercolors are manufactured by first preparing a mill-base, which is a mixture of raw pigment in gum arabic and wetting agent, as well as a plasticizer, such as glycerin, to help keep the color from drying out too rapidly. Gum arabic is a thick resin obtained from the acacia tree. It comes in small pieces which are tied in cheesecloth and soaked overnight in water to produce a gum solution. It is important that the pigment in the mill-base be uniformly dispersed, or the next step of grinding will be adversely affected. A base-paint will be produced by grinding the mill-base with additional medium (gum arabic) in a series of rollers, which may be made of iron, stone, or ceramic, or some combination of these three. It is said that too much grinding reduces the brilliance of a color, but too little grinding can produce a gritty consistency. Each pigment has different grinding requirements, and how well a manufacturer accommodates these requirements plays a large role in determining the quality of the final product. Most manufacturers use primarily iron rollers, reserving stone grinding for the most delicate pigments. The Schmincke Company is the only major paint manufacturer to use the extra-hard Diabas stone mills for all its colors, which is an expensive method of production. Holbein effectively uses a combination of iron, stone, and ceramic rollers to get the best from both the Old World technique and modern technology. The mill-base is first ground by iron rollers, then stone, then ceramic, which gives an increasingly finer dispersion. The specific number of revolutions and the pressure required for each pigment are considered trade secrets. At this point, the base-paint may need some adjustments so that the color matches previously established standards. This is done during the last stages of grinding when the paint is ground an additional two to three times to mix in antiseptic and antifungal agents. The paint is then inspected and aged before packaging. Watercolor pencils and crayons, which have long been in use among illustrators and graphic artists, have recently become popular among fine artists. Fortunately there are several brands that claim lightfastness, such as those produced by Derwent and by Caran D'Ache of Switzerland. They qualify as waterborne media since they can be drawn with and then reworked with a brush and water, applied to a wet surface, or mixed with water and then applied. (Excerpts from ART HARDWARE: The Definitive Guide to Artists’ Materials, by Steven Saitzyk © 1987)
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