Glossary: How watercolours age.

Of all the art mediums watercolour is the most prone to aging. The only totally safe method to stop this happening (but not completely eradicating it) is to store watercolours in a folder in a plans chest. This is the method of the 19th C. collectors who knew that the paints and pigments in their era where much more prone to fading than the present day's scientifically produced paints.

Fading is caused by ultra violet radiation in sunlight which acts as a bleaching agent which destroys the pigments in the paint. Some colours fade faster than others with blues and to a lesser extent reds being extremely fugitive. Fading occurs in two ways- firstly a general diminishment of colour over the whole painting and secondly in single colours, such as where the blue of the sky has faded but the trees remain green.

As I have said, there is no foolproof way of avoiding the aging process of fading, however, today's modern paints are greatly improved and I would recommend you to visit www.winsornewton.com for more information on paint technology. The best way of avoiding fading is to hang your watercolours out of direct sunlight and possibly use special glass that filters out UV radiation (expensive).