I keep thinking about my painting teacher in Florence—a watercolor class in a timeless glass ceilinged studio on the Via dell’Alloro. “You must promise to only follow this advice in watercolor—not in anything else in your life—well, maybe cooking,” she told us. “Intensify slowly. Use lots of water, and lay down a wash of color. Walk away, let the pigment move and bleed and dry on the paper. Then return to it with a slightly deeper hue, again and again until you think you are satisfied. Whatever you do, don’t rush it. The best parts happen when you have stepped away.”
