I've been watching a few videos over the last couple of days, particularly Geoff Kersey's and Keith Fenwick's. Both paint in watercolour, and both are entirely different - you only have to watch them yourselves to understand that. I enjoy both: I wouldn't really want to paint like Keith, frankly; and I've been slightly puzzled by Geoff. Both have a very distinct approach to painting in watercolour. Neither entirely appeals to me, for several different reasons. Oddly enough (perhaps) I have fewer problems with Keith Fenwick than with Geoff Kersey: Keith doesn't paint in traditional ways: he uses opaque white and touches of acrylic. I have to observe that I don't quite see why he doesn't paint entirely in acrylic, since he could get the same results without watercolour. In Geoff's case, he produces pure watercolour - ie, without any heavy use of opaque white - but very heavily aided by masking fluid....... And while I'm impressed by his results, a) I don't know, half the time, why he uses masking, and b) I'm mystified by his use of specific colours. In both cases, I wonder quite what either of them are offering new painters. Keith Fenwick is easily dealt with: he uses a variety of techniques, but is particularly attached to the use of opaque acrylic with watercolour, especially in his trees. And that's fair enough: He gets his results, and good luck to him: but they're not watercolour: they're a hybrid method. I don't criticize this, but is that what new painters are looking for? Geoff Kersey on the other hand - a subtler painter, it seems to me, who employs a far more fluid technique - is much closer to the pure watercolour method. But - and granted, he's a far more experienced watercolourist than I am - the masking fluid is employed with abandon. Like Terry Harrison, you know that the masking will be applied before the demonstration starts: it's an essential first step. I say again: I don't pretend to be a practised watercolour painter: both Keith and Geoff have years on me in terms of painting experience. But - I've always tried to avoid opaque paint, as a first option, in watercolour: I certainly use it, but never from first choice - always as a means of adding final detail (eg, a touch of Chinese white with a little Naples Yellow, maybe plus a hint of pthalo green); I have never used masking fluid, but bought some recently to reserve the bars of a gate..... although in the event I didn't use it at all. And then we come to the choice of colours - passing by Aureolin, one of Geoff's perennials, which has an unfortunate reputation in terms of permanence (maybe the SAA version is more reliable?). we come to the unvarying use of Rose Madder - now, is this Rose Madder Genuine, which will fade, or a permanent form, based on Quinacridone violet, which won't? I don't know, Geoff doesn't say ... maybe it's all clear on the SAA tubes - but as I don't use them, how am I supposed to know? Well - there we are. Maybe you can't separate painting from marketing. But - if students want to know how to paint in pure watercolour, I really don't know how helpful some of these demos are. All too many seem to have more to do with product promotion than painting. I think the most useful advice to any novice is a) choose your paints on the basis of sound information about composition and permanence - in which case you will avoid Alizarin Crimson, Rose Madder Genuine, and probably Aureolin like the plague - keep the use of opaque white in watercolour to a basic minimum, and don't take to masking fluid as the first option: a) because you probably don't need it at all - it hardly matters if you paint over dividing lines, for example - and b) because it encourages hard dividing lines, when the pleasure of watercolour is the soft merging of colours. Oil and acrylic are different matters entirely: they are not hag-ridden by short-cuts (unless you're a follower of the dire Bob Ross), maybe because their exponents take them that much more seriously and would scorn to offef facile tricks and easy routes to gratification. However: I'm entirely sure that Geoff Kersey, for example, is a dedicated watercolourist - and i just wonder why he finds it necessary to suggest the liberal use of masking which may well produce instant results, but which ultimately delays the point at which any serious painter really engages with their medium.