"Every time you touch the brush to the paper, you create an edge. That edge can be hard, soft, ragged, or something in between. The edge you make can also have a poetic quality to it, such as soft, forceful, whispering, majestic, lively, or harsh.With watercolor, you get a soft edge when you add paint to an area that's wet, whether this is still-wet paint or paper you've dampened with a brush or spray which encourages the paint so spread out. For a hard edge, work onto dry paint or paper, so the paint stays put.
"Edges are the magical components in painting that helps us create sensuous works."
Mary Whyte, Painting Portraits and Figures in Watercolor, page 100.
The theory is straightforward. In practice it's easy to unintentionally touch a brush into a wet area when you'd thought it dry!
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Comments
But what is the part of the Unconscious regarding making edges? Seurat or Cezanne for instance were aware of each of their brushstrokes(the latter said for that matter that painting was so exhausting…) whereas Pollock was not.
So…how to deal with these different stances as for us in our daily practice?
Perhaps Pollock was always working with a hard edge, given his dribble lines are very defined, they don’t flow into one another?
I think it comes down to what suits our personality, whether we meticulously measure each before we apply it, or whether we throw them down and rework, reinvent as we go along.