Can Watercolour Paper Deteriorate?

If you've pulled out a beloved pad or big sheet of watercolour paper only to find it's soaking up paint like a sponge, don't panic. You're not alone, and it's probably fixable.

Watercolour paper, whether cheap or expensive, cotton or cellulose, can deteriorate over time. There are two main culprits worth knowing about.

1. The first is chemical and/or biological damage. Acids from household cleaners, food smells, vinegar, even alcohol can drift through the air and quietly degrade your paper. Moisture give the opportunity for mould or algae, attracts insects or animals to stop by and snack. You'll usually notice yellowing, dark patches, tears, crumbling or even holes. Unfortunately, this kind of damage is pretty much permanent. there's not much you can do to rescue it. If this is effecting existing art work, especially if its precious, don’t attempt to fix it yourself seek out professional conservators. There are ways to improve the storage and display that can halt further deterioration.
2. The second culprit, the more common one, is the sizing breakdown. Sizing is the term used in paper making circles that refers to any substance added to or applied to the surface to reduce the absorbency of water. Most quality watercolour paper is coated with gelatine, the same stuff that makes jelly set. It's brilliant for painting because it holds moisture and pigment at the surface rather than letting them bleed deep into the paper. The problem is that gelatin is sensitive to humidity, temperature fluctuations, and light exposure. Humid environments or climates are particular culprits, but even leaving your pad on the back seat of a hot car can cause it to fail in patches. The result? Your paper suddenly behaves like blotting paper.

The good news is there are ways to bring sizing back. The simplest fix for the more expensive papers that will have both internal and external sizing is to wet the entire sheet, let it dry completely, and paint on it straight away. You can add the desired level you require in that new painting session. It sounds almost too easy, but it genuinely works, there are plenty of experienced painters who swear by it. The catch is you really only get one go at this, so time it well.

If that's not enough, you can re-size the surface entirely. Powdered gelatine is one option, though it's a bit fiddly. A more practical route is using a commercial watercolour ground.

I have found acrylic gesso also works well. Thin coats work best, I aim for two light layers, keeping the water content below about 30% to avoid bubbling and poor coverage. The dilution allows better flow/coverage and also gives you control over absorbency. More water leads to more absorbency, so a bit of experimentation and you can get back to something close to the original paper feel.

One tip worth trying: instead of a brush, use a small foam roller to apply the gesso. It leaves a fine, even texture similar to cold-press papers that's genuinely lovely to paint on. Especially if you're working with granulating pigments that like to settle into small dips and hollows.

So before you throw out that dodgy paper, give it a second chance. Chances are, it's not as far gone as it looks.

Pleasant Surprise at the 9by5 Exhibition

Yesterday I headed along to the City of Greater Dandenong Council's 9by5 exhibition opening at the Drum Theatre and was genuinely impressed. The foyer was packed with both a large crowd, and also with 225 works on show spanning a huge range of styles and media, from a few beginners right through to very experienced artists. Each artist could enter up to two pieces, and having everything the same size (9" by 5") made for a really cohesive exhibition. The organisers did a wonderful job fitting it all in.

My work ended up down the back (as usual), but I was pleased to find a red sticker already on one of my watercolours!

It was great chatting with some of the other artists. Everyone was enthusiastic and grateful for the opportunity to show their work. A point that kept coming up in conversation was how wonderful it is for people to be able to see and buy affordable original art, and I couldn't agree more.

The exhibition runs until 1st. May If you're on the south-east side of Melbourne, it's well worth calling in. and if you can't make it in person, the most works are also available to buy online.

Experimenting with Plein Air Easels and Sketchboards

I'm not entirely sure what to call these things: plein air easels, sketchboards, drawing boards? 

Whatever the right term is, I'm on the hunt for a minimal, easy-to-deploy setup for sketching and painting outdoors. The important restriction is that everything has to fit in my red art bag alongside all my other tools. So I've got three prototypes to test on my next trip.

Option one is a simple drawing board I cut down to fit the bag. I've added a quarter-inch T-nut so it can mount on a tripod, which gives it a bit more stability to the bag. It's just a flat sheet of plywood, 33 by 24.5 cm (about 13" x 9¾"). Nothing fancy, but solid.

Option two I'm calling a sketchbook holder. It's a prototype cut from matte board, 34 by 16.5 cm (roughly 13½" x 6½"). The clever bit is a slot cut into it where your sketchbook spine slots in. The back cover sits behind the board while the pages open out in front, held firmly in place with a couple of bulldog clips. The exposed board at the top gives you space for your sketching and painting media. There are plenty of DIY versions of this out there and I've been particularly inspired by Sarah Burn's design experiments. Commercial versions like those in the Etcher series are also worth a look. For my prototype, I'm using Velcro, though a lot of people prefer magnets.

Option three is a watercolour sketchboard, a bit bigger so it can handle larger sheets like an Arches block or similar pads. It's square at 29 cm (11"), mostly because I had a square piece of matte board handy. It loosely follows Doug's Sketching School design. The extra space means there are two configuration options: one end suits a bigger layout with a full size palette and room for a water container, while the other works better for larger pads but has less room for a palette and no space for water.

All three are light and fit neatly in the bag, so I'll take them all out and put each through its paces. With some creative use of clips, they can all handle pretty much the same tasks. Tripod mounting and a water bowl are the exception for now, but maybe I'll sort that out later.

Another Quick Tip - Experimenting with new tools and techniques

This is a simple recycling tip, to help keep your brushes happy. Stay watching for the Extra Bonus Tip about cleaning watercolour brushes at the end.

Still experimenting with new techniques and tools to create these videos. I just updated my very old version of VideoStudio, to the last every (2023) version. Despite the "end of the road" vibes. It does what I need. Faster rendering and higher resolution. Not to mention several new features to learn. This video for YouTube was filmed on my phone and edited with Corel VideoStudio.

So I still have a lot to learn about filming, presenting and more professional editing, BUT I am learning and enjoying myself. Maybe these tips might help or interest you.

Inktober is Over

Unlike in previous years, I submit my artwork to every day’s prompt during Inktober. A few might have been late at night, but all were submitted on the day in question. I had decided to have fun doing inkwork rather than stress myself about the ideas or the quality of the inkwork. I’m still getting over some unusual problems related to my corneal graft, particularly with close things that are on my right-hand side. Don't worry; my vision is improving, and this demonstrates I can do stuff like drawing and inking.

The final Inktober prompt was “award”.  So an award, such as a certificate or something for my favourite pen, was the obvious item to draw. I sketched this out, and it was pretty boring. I suppose I could spend a lot of time doing fancy cross-hatched edges and Lettering. Then it struck me I should have an awards ceremony, like a gold Oscar or Logie. A Greek goddess holding my favourite pen, which is still the Faber Castell Pitt Artist Pen range. They impressed me with their reliability, and they run smoothly for Indian Ink, giving a solid black line. They’re not the cheapest pens, but they seem to last, and I do find their line work suits my style. I have a few fixed-width fineliners, I dominantly use the thicker ones eg. 0.7 (M). My real favourites are the brush pen (B) and soft brush (SB) both of which give great flexibility in linework, the line width and expressive curves.

So it wasn’t hard to make a decision that the award should be part of the awards ceremony with a Statuette of a Greek Goddess holding the winning pen.

BTW I did have fun participating in Inktober this year and feel quite proud that I submitted something every day and finished the whole month.

Inktober 2025 Progress

I managed to get halfway through Inktober submit something everyday on the day it was due. A couple of submissions were late at night. Still I impress myself with staying power. I’m now looking at the prompts and trying not to do the really obvious. Not that there is an obvious illustration for a more conceptual ideas like today’s blunder. 

I guess there’s a lot of scope, blundering into something, you don’t want to make a blunder. But then I remember about the old fashion blunderbuss, the 17th century equivalent of a rifle. It could be loaded it with all sorts of things and instead of having a finely machine barrel to keep the bullets on track it had a wide open end. I guess it would have worked a lot more like a shotgun scattering bits and pieces all over the place. I’ve seen a couple of these gun and quite liked the way they were shaped and might be interesting to illustrate.

So I got onto DuckDuckGo and asked for illustrations of blunderbuss’es and I got a lot of cartoon-ish pilgrims carrying the definitive shaped rifle. hunting and bringing back home turkeys. Ahh, It’s about to be Thanksgivingin the USA! Nice Coincidence. We don’t have Thanksgiving in Australia, it’s not a family get together here. I guess we do have the Melbourne Cup about a week later which is a big deal an opportunity for a holiday and party, still I felt bad bets blunders might be a slightly different take on this theme, just a bit harder to draw.

Hope you enjoy my inktober submissions, I post them daily on my Instagram @normhansonart.

Inktober 2025, and an Extra Challenge

I’ve been doing some of Inktober prompts for the last several years. Not full on, just occasionally. Usually, I start and get about halfway through, then life takes over and there’s never enough time. Still I do have a bit of fun, getting to exercise pens that I have almost forgotten about. Sometimes it easy to get distracted because sometimes the prompts can become pretty obscure.

Just before this year’s Inktober I noticed Danny Gregory of SketchBook Skool had undertaken a little project. “How long should it take to do a drawing?” where he painted the same object in three different time frames. 15 seconds, 90 seconds or 15 minutes.

I was both intrigued and inspired so I decided to do a similar exercise as I started inktober this year. First, I started with the simple prompt moustache and only gave myself 15 seconds which is actually more time than it sounds. Then I moved on to weave prompt in 30 seconds, which was an obscure ode to Michel Eugene Chevreul, a 19th century French chemist asked to settle a dispute between weavers and dye makers. His investigations lead to his formulating the Rule of Simultaneous Contrast (of Colours). Which in turn inspired many os the French Impressionists. Next a crown in one minute, but now as I’m trying to do fairly precise lines, a minute didn’t seem very long at all. I just doubled the time allowed for each new prompt.

When I got to 16 minutes for my starfish, I figured there was enough time to create a decent ink drawing. So I stopped timing after that, I normally try to get my pen work done around the 20-minute mark. If I’m doing an ink or watercolour wash it’s fairly easy, but when I do stippling or cross-hatching it can take a lot longer. Dating back to my early cartooning days I do find stippling and cross-hatching somewhat therapeutic You’re just drawing the same pattern over and over again keeping you in the present, the aim of most trendy and expensive wellness workshops. It isn’t really spoiling the fun, just extending it and free!

Remember those days before all the computer tools, when a single click that can now fill in a shape didn’t exist, OK we had Letraset patterns which you could cut out and stick on. But for most ink shading we had to do it by hand.

You can follow my inktober submissions on Instagram @normhansonart

Interesting stories about the colour Caput Mortuum

One of the pastels used in a recent zoom demonstration by Lyn Mellady for the Pastel Society of Victoria came in for a bit of discussion. The evocative name Caput Mortuum conjures a mysterious aura, Latin for “dead head” or “worthless remains”. The name most likely originates from alchemical traditions, where it referred to the residue left after distillation, symbolising what was left behind when the “noble” elements had ascended. Perhaps picking up a bit of spiritual importance in transforming alchemical waste (death, decay) into artistic material (new life).

Despite its ominous name, the pigment itself is rich and versatile. It is identified in medieval paintings and manuscripts, and was widely used in oil paints and fabric dyes, especially during the 18th and 19th centuries. Artists prized it for its earthy tone, opacity, and ability to create dramatic shadows and depth. Its popularity peaked in religious and Romantic art, often appearing in robes, backgrounds, and symbolic compositions.

Mummy Brown and the Pre-Raphaelites

In the 1800s, mummy brown, also called caput mortuum, a pigment reportedly made from ground-up Egyptian mummies, was widely used by European artists for its rich, warm tone and excellent transparency. It was especially popular among the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, a group of English painters who sought to revive the detail and vibrancy of early Renaissance art.

One of the most striking anecdotes involves Edward Burne-Jones, a prominent Pre-Raphaelite artist. According to multiple sources, Burne-Jones was horrified when he learned that the pigment he had been using was made from actual human remains. His nephew, Rudyard Kipling, recalled the moment in his autobiography:

“He [Burne-Jones] descended in broad daylight with a tube of ‘Mummy Brown’ in his hand, saying that he had discovered it was made of dead Pharaohs and we must bury it accordingly. So we all went out and helped ... according to the rites of Mizraim and Memphis.”

This symbolic burial of the pigment in his garden marked a turning point in the ethical awareness of artists. Burne-Jones’s reaction wasn’t unique many artists began to abandon mummy brown as the supply of mummies dwindled and the moral implications became harder to ignore.

Sources for Further Reading

• Art UK: The Corpse on the Canvas – The Story of Mummy Brown
• Wikipedia: Mummy Brown
• JSTOR Daily: When Artists Painted with Real Mummies
• Explore more of Evie Hatch's insights in the Ask an Artist podcast interview 
• Or her writings on Jackson’s Art Blog.

I’ve been using the colour for some time, it’s a deep, brownish-purple pigment derived from iron oxide (Fe₂O₃), specifically hematite or a synthetic equivalent. It is a common hue in soft pastels, with most brands also offering hues in a couple of lighter tints. Unfortunately, it is less common today in other media such as oil, acrylic or watercolour paints. It’s a good colour for enriching and warming up shadows. Although it is not an intensely chromatic or bright colour, it does strike a pleasing simultaneous contrast with turquoise or stronger greens. Modern versions have variable opacity but are an excellent help to mix or emphasise clean neutral colours.

Some research assisted by Copilot (AI)

When Art Meets Science: The Discovery of Olo

Art and science have always been intertwined, but this connection has been reinforced in my recent experience with colour theory, painting, and an extraordinary scientific discovery. What began as sketches of surf rescue boats transformed into a meditation on the nature of colour itself.

From Sketch to Exhibition

My observations at Venus Bay, capturing the interplay between the red inflatable rescue boats and the sea-green illuminated waves, evolved into a series of paintings. The composition fascinated me—horizontal lines of waves contrasted against the strong diagonal of boats running up the surf, foam splashing dramatically in front.

I developed this theme through various sizes: sketches and smaller tests up to half-sheet paintings to perfect the colours and composition. Despite struggling with worsening eyesight, the work progressed well. The culmination was a submission to the Poetry of Watercolour exhibition at VAS, which was accepted—a gratifying validation of my ongoing colour exploration.

The Olo Discovery

Just weeks after my exhibition acceptance, an announcement emerged from the United States: scientists had discovered a new colour called "Olo." This wasn't just any colour discovery—it represented a new direction in how we understand human vision and colour perception.

I first heard of the discovery on local radio where Professor Ren Ng, originally from Melbourne, was interviewed, revealing something extraordinary. Olo isn't a colour we can see in everyday circumstances. It requires precise adjustments to how our eyes' cones are activated, specifically targeting mid-wavelength cones through sophisticated machinery.

The Science Behind the Sensation

They used a machine/system known as OZ Vision, after the equipment developer. This firstly has to map those cones, the eyes colour receptors in a tiny section of retina,.  Then, micro pluses of laser beams of very specific wavelengths—corresponding closely to turquoise and greenish turquoise colours—are directed at these cones. The S (shortwavelength) and L (longwavelength) responding cones were not targeted. Resulting in the viewer seeing an intensely vivid colour that closely resembles what Oswald called his "sea green." only much brighter.

What makes Olo particularly fascinating is its demonstration that colour sensation is essentially an illusion created by energy in the form of visible light of specific wavelengths. The discovery doesn't necessarily suggest colours exist outside the boundaries of the chromaticity diagram, or outside the rainbow as widely reported, but rather reveals new possibilities for how we might experience colour. While we may not see new ways to see a broader range of colours or artificial pigments immediately, the research opens possibilities for enhanced colour experiences, perhaps fixing colour-blindness and a deeper understanding of how our brains process visual information.

The name "Olo" is a little scientific geeky: 010, zero-one-zero representing the signal pattern to different cone types—0 signal to the S cones, 1 or full signal to the M cones, and 0 signal to the L cones. This precision underscores the scientific rigour behind what might otherwise seem like an abstract artistic concept.

Art as Scientific Method

Perhaps most remarkably, this experience demonstrates how artistic practice can parallel scientific inquiry. My methodical approach to colour matching, systematic observation of natural phenomena, and documentation through sketches mirrors the scientific methods in many ways.

The artist's patient observation of colour relationships, light conditions, and natural phenomena provides a different but equally valid path to understanding. When Rob Candy gave me that Wilcox palette, neither of us could have predicted it would lead to connections between 19th-century colour theory, contemporary surf rescue training, and 21st-century vision science.

This convergence reminds us that the boundaries between art and science are often artificial. Both disciplines seek to understand and represent reality, whether through pigment and brush or laser and laboratory equipment. The discovery of Olo proves that there are still new colours to be found—not just in nature, but in the remarkable machinery of human perception itself.

see also Part 1 The Quest for Sea Green

Part 3 AI, Technology and Traditional Observation

Part 4 The Magic of Rare Optical Phenomena

Keeping it Simple for Plein Air Painting

Nothing kills the joy of plein air painting faster than battling the elements and lugging around excessive gear. As a passionate outdoor painter, I've learned some tricks to streamline my setup and focus on the act of creating.

The biggest hassle is managing the paper, the surface to paint on. Wind is the natural enemy of a damp painting, and rain can smudge your masterpiece in seconds if you're not prepared. Over the years, I've realized that less is more when it comes to plein air essentials.

My humble blue canvas bag has become an invaluable ally. It comfortably fits pads and blocks up to roughly A3 size - plenty of room for field studies done in the open air's changeable conditions. I typically pack A4 or A5 pads or blocks of watercolor paper, sometimes supplemented with  inexpensive cartridge paper for simple sketches and pen drawings

A couple of drawing boards with tripod attachments also slip into the bag nicely. Their firm surfaces help keep the pads in place, and a few bulldog clips allow me to secure paintings-in-progress between the boards if I need to pack up quickly due to unexpected showers.

By the way, painting outdoors is great I love it

The Beauty of Minimalist Plein Air Sketching

Sometimes the most memorable artistic moments happen spontaneously without an elaborate setup. A case in point - I was out enjoying the late afternoon on the forshore at Cowes, intending to stay to paint the sunset. However, as I awaited the warm light a ship standing by and people milling about on the beach provided the perfect scene for a quick sketch.

That's when the beauty of a minimalist sketching kit came into play. I didn't need much more than a small sketch pad, a couple of water brushes, and my trusty little dot chart colour wheel. 

There's something immensely satisfying about working with just the bare essentials out in the field. You become hyper-focused on transcribing the essence of the moment through swift brushstrokes. No fiddling with complex setups or hauling cumbersome gear - just you, the scene, and a sparse collection of tools.

Speaking of those essential tools, one item that continues to prove invaluable is my homemade dot chart colour wheel. Not only is it highly portable, but crafting your own allows you to arrange pigment scales exactly how your artistic brain understands colour relationships best.

Making one is also delightfully simple...

Why I like Water Brushes

I've been using water brushes for some time, I particularly loved them in the field with a small portable palette, like my little Cotman sketcher box. Alas, I tend to lose them.

On a recent visit to the art shop, I found that Derivan now makes a set of four refillable brush pens. This set is reasonably priced and comes in different tip sizes and a larger barrel capacity. The brushes are made of nylon hairs, one Chisel tip and the other is pointed rounds of three sizes. They are designed for both water and Derivan’s acrylic inks. I decided to add my watercolour ink, diluted about 50% to one of the middle-sized round tips as a worthwhile addition to my sketching stuff. The idea is it could add the mid-tones while I just sketched with a normal black pen. This combination struck me as ideal for getting that first compositional/tonal sketch down quickly. It worked perfectly.

I chose the cyan ink just because I've been using the cyan gel pen which blends in quite well if you want to paint over the top of it. Also, I didn't have any grey watercolour ink on hand. At some future stage, I'll probably try diluted fountain pen ink but I will avoid Indian Inks it's likely to come up the brush tip.

If you want a laugh, read how ChatGPT rewrote this post for Instagram, less the outrageous bit I removed.

Secure Drawingboard Tripod Mount

It was time to update my flimsy method of connecting my sketch board to a tripod (it was just a ¼” nut glued onto the back of a plywoodboard).

I had been given a wonderful little connector which can be hammered into the board (I now know they are called T-Nuts ¼” or maybe barrel nuts and used extensively in prefabricated furniture manufacture). I decided to add a separate piece/pad to hold the nut securely in place (with gorilla glue this time).

I have a variety of tripods and camera plates to allow connection to tripods and other stands, and they are different sizes. Also, the tripods they serve have different heads allowing different movements. I made this extra pad square with the maximum dimension of connector plates (70cm) so I could mount this either way (with the board either vertically or horizontally aligned). Importantly with the rotate/tilt handle easily accessed from the front, so you don’t need to get up to adjust the drawing/painting surface. I also added a layer of the “bubbly” rubber sheet sold for lining kitchen pot and pan draws to provide a very sound surface for the plate to screw into and hold firm.

The result is versatile and holds firm, from my lightweight portable tripod to a desk mounting position and all other options.

Pastel Plein Air Kit Colour Selection

I’ve rearranged my soft pastel plein air kit (actually just two plastic boxes with a minimal set of useful colours in ”half sticks” that I might find handy for sketching). Making them into a set of the 6 primary colours I use (RGB + CYM), plus a neutral greyish column and a couple of columns of earth colours. Within each colour group, I have something intense along with lighter and darker tonal variations including very soft and harder composition pastels

Let's see how I go. I’m sure to need to change out and swap a few sticks. BUT the new arrangement looks nice.

Can AIart be considered an artistic tool?

Despite the overwhelming impression you might get from just reading the latest social media post that there are two sides to the current #AIart cognitive dissonance.  The artist Luddites, who are claiming their creativityis being stolen versus the non-artistic utopians who think that text to image prompts lets them make great art in seconds. However, there is a lot of ground between the two camps.

I have worked with and spoken to other artists who have been very interested in what this new text to image tools, like Dall-E or Stable Diffusion can do. Many have been investigating these techniques as legitimate ways to create expressions of their unique creativity. In other words, is there life in these approaches as a tool. In my opinion it's not a simple yes/no answer but there is promise.

I have actually been interested and evaluating AI for a long time. I was even very early using the hashtag #AIart. In particular I have experimented with the idea of using such machine learning to capture the essence of my style of mark-making and “find” that within photos I have taken. This is one of the areas of what I have investigating under the “hand drawn photo”project. This method definitely has merit. Below is an example I created at nighcafe using their style transfer method. 

I starred with a handrawn image of an eagle's head I drew for Inktober. This was then used to “train” a simple neural net. I also supplied a photo, a self-portrait, which I had used as inspiration for myrevised profile on instagram. The training of the personalised network has to be scheduled on to suitable computer somewhere about on the internet and does take a while so the resulting image is not returned immediately. It is worth waiting for because now I have a black and white rendering. In my style of inkwork is closely follows the tones and shapes of the photo. I printed it on a laser printer and then hand-coloured it with my earth-coloured Ecoline Brush pens. I would consider this a work of my own art, but I have used some aspects of #Aiart in its creation.

Second Generation selfportrait

 A lot of people on the Internet express the opinion that artist will go extinct because of #AIart. I am not one of them.

AIart Selfportarit of Artist on the Beach
(Style tranfer of a photo using a stable diffusion reference)

The current crop of text to image neural networks can be quite amazing, very good at capturing style, colouring and texture aspects of artistic mark making. Not so good at expressing an artist intent, specifically originality. Unfortunately, most of the current neural networks I’ve been trained up on rather depressing and dystopian art and images. I’m not sure that this is really the direction of art, more to do with the wasteland of trends on social media, where most images are found these days. Further so much depends on how you express yourself in the text prompt and modifiers. Will poets become the new visual artists?  Further it’s become common practice to keep refining the image and prompt. This is a lot like building up glazes or over-painting, creating layers of added texture and form and more eye appeal.

Already I can see that the simple first attempt text string output on social media from any of the AIart systems around at the moment, looks much the same, not quite right, unusually cropped and frequently scarily dystopian. Hopefully those jumping on the “one-click” filter style of social media influencer posts will soon become bored with the method. Leaving those interested in the potential for artistic expression time to experiment and refine methods. Thereby expanding the range of tools and media they have to hand. I for one look forward to this time.

Visiting the Night Cafe

Returning to the #handrawphoto project

This isn't hand drawn but was once a self-portrait photo, inspired by MC Escher. It is now however a construct using VQGAN+Clip Artifical Intelligence algorithm via the website Night Cafe. Rather than Building a random "white noise" Canvas, I started with my own photo, and using a cubitist style

The Connections Exhibition is OPEN

 

Wednesday Wanderer's Connnections Exhibition opens today at AGRA Gallery

22 artists (including me) are represented with 82 works. If you want to "Meet the Artists" you will have that opportunity on Saturday & Sunday 5/6th March; 1-4pm

Wednesday Wanderers and the Flow State

The wanderers began by happen-chance. Three of us started our own small plein air painting/sketching group out in the real world. Soon after Victoria began it first lock down and after a couple of rocky test, we started meeting on zoom on Wednesday at 10:00am. It was a welcome get together and we started painting a shared photo supplied by one of the participants since it was the free zoom meeting we only had 40 minutes for the session before we got cut off. Not a lot of time to carry out a watercolour painting of a scene you had not seen before.

The Watercolours Society of Victoria had purchased the Pro version of zoom and kindly allowed us to use their service so we were no longer bound by the 40 minute limit but kept the rough timing and format.

There is a Chinese proverb attributed to Lao Tzu

“If you are depressed you are living in the past.
If you are anxious you are living in the future.
If you are at peace you are living in the present.”

It is this being in the present when you are painting, that probably explains lot of the popularity of the Wanderers

Mihaly Explains [watercolour on Canvas by Norm Hanson]

I believe it has a lot to do with helping the participants slip into what the Psychologist Mihály Csíkszentmihályi identified and calls the Flow State. In which the duration of time is altered, hours pass in minutes, minutes can stretch out to seem like hours.

After interviewing many successful people for his study of the Psychology of Optimal Experience, he concluded that there were seven common experiences shared by these people. He calls these the Elements of Enjoyment

1. Confronted by a task, with a chance of completing it.
2. Be able to concentrate on the task
3. Task has a clear goal
4. Immediate Feedback
5. Could participate with a deep but effortless involvement (remove from the constraints and frustration of every day life)
6. Be enjoyable (allowing people to exercise control over the actions)
7.  Concern for self disappears (yet paradoxically the feeling of self emerges stronger after the flow is over.

Mihaly liked to explain this in two dimensions, the challenge versus skills.

He believes you can most easily move into flow if you are aroused (but anxious) by the challenge and you take the opportunity to practise and improve your skills, or you are confident in your skill (but bored) until you get inspired by the challenge. Flow occurs when a task’s challenge is balanced with one’s skill.

A very important aspect of the Wanderers is the group dynamic. Mihaly studied and advised many sporting groups including the successful  Australian Women’s Hockey team, Australian Olympics cyclists and ice skaters. He lists these important characteristics for teams to Achieve Flow and thus improve their collective performance by achieving group flow.

1. Group empathy (including helping others to achieve their desired performance)
2. Activity has clear goal
3. Opportunity to be both autonomous and at the same time cooperating in the group.
4. Immediate feedback (both personally and shared with the team)
5. Skill required matches the difficulty of the task. Some individuals can focus on different skills 

Whilst we were not always in focused together, and seldom on all aspects. Those participating were generally focussed in the present challenge testing their skills and often reaching the flow state.  Mihaly says it is this flow that allows the enjoyment of experiencing that you are good at something while you are doing it. It didn’t matter so much if you had or had not finished or looked the same as others.

 Norm Hanson
Febraury 2022

Connecting What and Who are the Wednesday Wanderers?

 What were you doing during the lockdowns? (well assuming they are over) 

Here is something I did and we are having an exhibition, If you are in Melbourne or allowed into Victoria please come and have a look.

Wednesday Wanderers was born out of the COVID-19 pandemic.  Unable to meet or paint en plein air during strict lockdowns, three committee members from the Watercolour Society of Victoria were feeling isolated and fed up with their own four walls.  It’s easy to forget that before COVID, many people had never used or even heard of Zoom.  We used it to connect a diverse community of watercolourists interested in escaping from the pandemic blues once a week.  We adopted a quirky speed painting format that challenged our skills and fit in with the technology requirements. 

Immediately it became apparent that there was a need for something like this, as membership quickly grew.  It has enabled artists who could never have come to a real-world paint-out to spend time some enjoyable time painting together in a safe environment.  Time poor artists, artists who live far from Melbourne, housebound artists, and those caring for family members. 

 We continue to meet fortnightly now that lockdowns are presumably a thing of the past.  We now have Wanderers in many parts of Victoria, as well as New South Wales, Western Australia, and the United States.  We have become a warm, welcoming community that continues to grow.

,,, Jane Elliston