An unhealthy obsession with watercolours...

So I may have an unhealthy obsession with watercolours....*winks*

I can pinky swear that I have not bought any watercolours since my trip to Japan earlier this year .... but that's because I bought a whole lot when I was there *see picture for evidence*.

Yes, that's just the stash I got in Japan...I also have the German Schmincke, the French Sennelier, the American Daniel Smith...and a whole lot of those craft-grade stuff too. Hence, an unhealthy obsession with watercolours.

What watercolours offer is the captivating interplay of brilliantly transparent pigments in water spreading over white watercolour paper. Sometimes you lose control of them like in my eye painting when I spilled water over the iris when it was still wet...*dramatic music plays in the background*.

Purists say that it is an unforgiving medium because when you go too dark, it is hard to "lift" the pigment off the paper. And that the white should not be painted in as an afterthought, it should be the white from the paper. Yes, you have to control the amount and flow of water, the transparency of the pigments and keep parts of the paper white.

Luckily, I'm a mixed media kind of girl so I saved my painting with coloured pencils and a white acrylic marker....who has time to apply masking fluid, right? *LOL*

What about you? What is your unhealthy obsession??