Interesting Things Happen at the Edges

by Jack Curtis

As an architect, I have always drawn for a living. When most people think of architects, they think of buildings, but it all begins with an idea, then it becomes a drawing, a representation of your idea in two dimensions, all before you begin to realize that vision in material form. This process has been instrumental in my approach to watercolor painting, too. Like developing a design for a building, you need to start with a vision or a narrative that you want to express.

Often the first idea isn’t the best one, and the first drawing isn’t the final one either; you need to test and push and edit before you are satisfied. The clearer you can be on the intent and the focus when you start, the clearer the path is that you will travel. And of course, once you have that final idea developed and outlined on your drawings, you still have to trust others to execute your vision. Something similar happens with painting—you have to trust the process and let the materials follow their natural tendencies. A lot of people struggle with watercolors because you can’t control every aspect of the process. You can gently respond to the direction in which the painting is developing, but you have to let the material—and especially the water—do what it’s going to do. If architecture is a collaboration between all the different people working on a project, then watercolor painting is a collaboration between you and the water and the brushes and the paper.

People generally love watercolors because of the visible fingerprint of the water. The painting feels inherently natural and makes it easy for people to connect with the image. Watercolors can capture the essence or mood of a place with a few well-placed brushstrokes. Often the best watercolor has an airiness or a transparency to the finished image. You can still see the paper in some way, or you can imagine the sky beyond the painted subject. There can be a real risk of overworking a painting, and often you only really see that line once you’ve crossed it. Yet, that doesn’t mean the painting is a failure; it just means the painting is a lesson learned for your next effort, because there is not just a process to each individual painting but also a process to developing your own painting style and approach, your painting practice.

My process often involves several steps as I move from inspiration to image. The biggest challenge is deciding on a theme that I am interested in examining. I might start by gathering reference materials, but usually the first big step is a value study, where I use a program that highlights the contrasts of an image. Then I do pencil studies next, where I can begin to capture details and proportion. Often, I will superimpose a grid on the paper for guidance and to help me better understand the geometry of an image. Drawing the details in this phase allows me to absorb them so they can be repeated in later efforts. Then, I test with pigments, starting with an initial wash in light tones, similar to the value study that was completed earlier. At this point, I start to layer on the paint and review any issues or problems that arise: How is the paint moving? How do I address an oddity in the proportion of the image? But not all issues need to be resolved, because those unresolved moments leave room for other people to use their imaginations or leave space for them to inhabit the image. Just like the world around us, no painting can be perfect.

I find echoes of my profession through the themes I pursue in my painting—ideas about the city and dwelling, ideas about perception or where the line between the natural and the constructed lie. Often, as an architect, when a line is drawn it becomes a definitive boundary between spaces or materials. But I prefer to think about architecture as a series of edges. In a similar way, there are rarely hard lines with watercolors, only a series of edges. Sometimes those edges are defined, but more often they are blurry and their blurriness becomes evocative, full of feeling. The edges are where you see interesting things happening—whether it’s the transition of materials, a space for people to gather, or the edge between a lake and the shore. Edges and transitions and messy moments are always filled with life. And you have to let those moments do what they are going to do.

All of the images are watercolors by Jack Curtis, 2023.