Involving a simple method of creation in terms of minimal art supplies requirement and ease of use on almost every surface, watercolor is considered one of the most common medium to paint with. Mastering these water-based colorful pigments, some of the artists have transformed this humble medium into profound watercolor portrait painting and stunning works showcasing painterly brilliance.

Let’s explore the five most famous contemporary watercolor artists who have gained immense control over the versatile medium.  

• Lourdes Sanchez

Owing to her distinctive approach and processing of various forms and shapes, Lourdes Sanchez gave a new meaning to the use of watercolors. The Cuban-born artist paints geometric or organic shapes and forms employing the technique of watercolor and liquid ink staining that leaves a dramatic effect on the surface of the paper. Further, she lets the inks seep into one another leading to a lurk atmosphere in her paintings.

She derives her inspiration boost for her works from her visits to the Rockefeller wing of the Metropolitan Museum, local second-hand bookstores, vintage clothing stores, flea markets in Mexico. Hover between abstraction and representation, her watercolor paintings are having everyone going nuts and are high on demand on almost every online art gallery.

• Nadine Faraj

Born in 1977, Nadine Faraj got her Bachelor of Fine Arts from Concordia University in Montreal, and her Master’s degree in Fine Arts from the School of Visual Arts in the bustling city of New York. Later in 2008, Nadine enrolled in an intensive life and anatomical drawing courses at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris, also undertaking an apprenticeship with a Canadian artist Yehouda Chaki.

A Canadian artist, Nadine Faraj is best known for her watercolor on paperwork, transforming the provocative sex images from magazines into more human versions. Employing the wet technique, using the spilled watercolors over the paper, she creates nude bodies engaged in intercourse or simply being with strong elements of sensitivity and sensuality.

Exposed to color running, bleeding, and expanding uncontrollably, her works showcase a more intimate approach with a humane note to it.

• Don Bachardy

Born in Los Angeles in 1934, Don Bachardy studied at the famous Chouinard Art Institute in Los Angeles and the Slade School of Art in London. Post his first solo exhibition at London’s Redfern Gallery in 1961, he held several successful solo exhibitions at the world’s prominent galleries and studios. Many of his stunning creations became part of permanent collections of prestigious cultural centers spanning from the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York to the National Portrait Gallery in London.

Intrigued with the human body, particularly the specific look on the human face depicting emotions and feelings, he has painted realistic portraits transmitting powerful emotions beyond perfection. Throughout his several decades’ long career, he has depicted characters from distinct backgrounds, some being musicians, artists, and some ordinary people who were ready to be a sitter for him, and often in pain, suffering, even anguish. It is his subtly used color and the line that makes his work more authentic and real.

He is most famous for his art collection of watercolor portrait paintings featuring the most popular faces of Hollywood including Warren Beatty, Charles Laughton, Joan Rivers, Roddy McDowall, Montgomery Clift, Tilda Swinton, Angelina Jolie. What makes his work more interesting is his portrayal of these celebrities as anybody else refraining from adding the celebrity cult in the favor of purified realism. In this attempt, he was more interested in depicting the person as it is without incorporating any additional context, although those portraits were clearly highlighting the change of popular culture and the art market scene. Despite the array of celebrity clients, her love interest Isherwood, acknowledged novelist, playwright, screenwriter, and autobiographer always remained his primary subject.

• Amy Park

Born in Warren, Ohio, Amy Park she received a BFA in 1999 and an MFA in 2003 from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Later she also spent time honing her skills at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and Ox-Bow Summer Art School. Fascinated by smooth surfaces and fine geometrical shapes, most of her paintings, often large scale, depict iconic architecture executed to perfection. Her watercolor creations painted with extreme accuracy

 are based on her own photographs of major landmarks and skyscrapers across the world.

During her foray into becoming an artist, she did several solos and participated in a large number of group exhibitions. During the years, her paintings became part of permanent collections like New York-Presbyterian Hospital, Microsoft Corporation, and Drawing Center’s Artist Archive at the Museum of Modern Art. Drawn to perfection, some of her paintings were sold on prominent online art galleries at high prices.

• Ekaterina Smirnova

Russian artist Ekaterina Smirnova stepped into the art world back in 1991, when she was attending an art school in Siberia. Later, in 2006 she moved to the USA where she joined The Art Students League of NY and worked to further develop her artistic skills. Though she works in different media including ceramic sculptures, music collaborations, and interactive electronics, large-scale watercolor paintings are her primary way of expression. Painting with large hardware brushes on rough textured paper employing the techniques of splashing, spraying, wiping, and washing, she creates breathtaking international landscapes in her paintings thereby bringing a new dimension to this traditional medium of watercolors. Stains, splashes, drips, and puddles also form an important element of her paintings particularly in producing the nuanced atmospheres.

“Living on the planet Earth, taking our place on it, being occupied with our daily routine is our destiny as human beings. Each of us is just a little part of the Universe, so versatile and limitless. I would like to understand our place in it, our triviality in the universal and our significance in the planetary scale.” —  Ekaterina Smirnova elaborating on the humans’ position within the Universe

Highly inspired by science — astronomy, physics, and chemistry, Smirnova gained world attention with her project 67P which was based on the comet data received by the Rosetta mission of the European Space Agency. She often collaborates with scientists, engineers from around the globe to gain insight into their research which she interprets into her art often going beyond the medium’s typical physical boundaries.