Watercolor bleeds notes

This is a notes page to describe a part of watercolor painting that oil and acrylic painter hate, digital has yet to do right and watercolorists love: bleeds.

Essentially a bleed or a bloom happens when a lot of water goes somewhere where there is only a little water in the paper, as it moves it carries along pigment, leaving either lighter area in the case of just water and colorful bursts in the case of a pigment infused into the water. I have both examples on this sheet.

Some people cant stand thiese things, but I use them very liberally in my art. being able to control bleeds also means i have less to worry about when using loose watercolor paper: I use the buckling of the paper to create certain shapes of blooms.

As for those of you who are wanting to avoid these things the answer is simple: dry paper. This only happens on wet brush on wet paper (wet on wet) where different parts are differing amounts of wetness. If the paper is dry, you will get a sharp edge when you take a wet brush to paper(wet on dry).