Max Mallie's Blog: Ode to the Sea | Enza Viceconte Watercolor Seascapes

As a watercolorist, Enza Viceconte finds water to be essential to her work, and it also serves as the subject and spiritual wellspring of her creative output. “I really love the sea, its rocks and its natural light,” Viceconte says. “The silent and private language I share with the sea has always been a source of inspiration for me.” The artist doesn’t have to travel far for that inspiration: She lives in Tuscany, on the famed island of Elba, which has been her home for years.

Viceconte’s work owes its brightness and chromatic clarity to the relatively small number of colors she uses. She turns to Winsor & Newton tube paints, as she says they preserve freshness. She primarily uses aureolin, rose madder, cobalt, ultramarine, burnt sienna and Payne’s gray. With aureolin, rose madder and cobalt, she creates the tones of warm or cool gray that are the foundation of her work. With ultramarine, burnt sienna and Payne’s gray, she shades and depicts darker areas.

Learn more about the artist’s methods—and see some of her more dynamic paintings of the Mediterranean Sea—in the February 2017 issue of Watercolor Artist, available at northlightshop.com on November 29 and on newsstands December 20.