Today in my designated time to be on Reddit (I’ve started using an app, called Opus, to help limit my app usage and phone time) my feed presented to me what I consider to be a masterpiece of art.
Only this painting doesn’t hang in any museum anywhere, nor is the artist a recognizable name. I mean, unless you consider u/Every-Refrigerator20, recognizable? I didn’t think so.
I love this piece because A.) I live near the mountains and they look like this (sans the foreground) from my balcony and B.) because this is the mountains captured perfectly on a slightly overcast day in the late afternoon when the sun is struggling to make anything bright.
I’ve been in an open field like this at this time before, there is a calm and almost eerie feeling to nature in these moments. The artist did such an incredible job capturing the mood of what it feels like in a moment like this. These are also moments when it feels like the mountains aren’t real - they feel like a watercolor painting, all subdued and with little contrast. The shapes and shadows and snow and crevasses and peaks just blend together and appear flat.
Of all the subreddits I belong to r/watercolor is easily in my top 5. I fancy myself a bit of a watercolor artist in my very spare time, it’s the medium that suits me best. There is something about the easy of mixing colors, the fluidity of the paint, the delicate patient nature needed to get things right mixed with the impossibility with getting things right that resonates with me.
The subreddit is so inspiring because day after day I see works on there that blow me away. I always think to myself “how in the world are there this many amateur artists with this much talent and ability to make these works of art?”
It simply seems unfashionable to me. I’ve always wanted to find a way to create a platform that sells these works and makes money for these artists (if they wanted to) because they make such amazing art.
To illustrate my point, the rest of this post is going to be a collection of images I’ve saved over the last 10 years of my favorite r/watercolor paintings (I have a dedicated photo album for this and have been collecting them for at least 8 years). On some of these you will ask yourself
Is this actually watercolor???
The answer is yes.
I’ll give my gratitude here first before you indulge yourself in these gorgeous works and also offer an apology to all the artists - I very rarely save the post on Reddit and so almost all of these I have no idea who the artist is to give the credit to. I’m hoping my utter obsession with the subreddit and my public expression of pure love and gratitude makes up for this.
With love and deep appreciation,
-Andrew






























