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I paint custom watercolors by hand using the line wash technique from Valencia, Spain. Every commission is a painted conversation.
I'm Pedro Mas and I paint original watercolors, by hand, one at a time
Original watercolors on commission, painted one at a time from my home studio, half an hour from Valencia. Houses, pets, people, places.
I've spent twenty years in graphic design and never stopped painting. A year ago I started taking it seriously.
I come from drawing and design
I did an arts-focused track in high school, then courses in photography, graphic design and web design. That's where my career came from: twenty years composing, laying out, deciding where everything goes. I'm still at it — now also as a founding partner at Piximbi, a marketing agency three friends and I built, each of us from our own craft.
I apply all of that to every commission: the light, the framing, what stays and what's cut, what leads the composition. And on the photography side, I can tell right away whether the photo you send works for a watercolor or whether we should look for another one. I'll tell you before I start, not after.
Why watercolor
I tried many techniques and settled on watercolor.
Light and color give any piece a finish nothing else comes close to.
And I paint on commission so that photo that got looked at once and buried among ten thousand others on your phone becomes an original piece, painted by hand and hung in your favorite corner. So you can have it in view every day.
My way of painting
The line gives it shape.
The color, layer by layer, adds volume, light and texture.
It's called line wash: first the ink drawing, then the watercolor on top, layer by layer. That's the whole technique.
01 The photo they sent me
02 The ink line, before color
03 The first layers
04 The color, layer by layer
05 The finished, signed piece
06 In their home
Professional-quality materials
Paper
Watercolours
Brushes
Inking
Fabriano paper, 100% cotton, 300 gsm. It is expensive and it does not buckle when the water goes on. With bad paper no technique will save the piece.
Winsor & Newton watercolour. Artist pigment, not student grade. The colour holds up to light over the years instead of fading.
Escoda brushes. Made in Barcelona. They are the ones I use for all the colour work.
Sakura Pigma Micron ink. Permanent ink. It does not run when the watercolour goes over it, which is exactly what line wash is about.
Hand-painted colour chart
How I work
There's no studio with a team behind it. It's just me.
I read your message, analyze the photo, decide the composition, design the inking, paint it layer by layer, and pack it myself. Before moving to color, I show you the sketch: if something's off, that's when it costs nothing to change.
That's why each piece takes as long as it takes, and why I can't run twenty commissions at once.
The name
We all have grey days. Having "pensamientos de colores" — colored thoughts — is exactly the opposite: looking at things with optimism, with excitement and with warmth. It's not just what this is called, it's what it's about.
A few things I've painted
View the portfolio →
Open for commissions
Have a photo you'd like to see painted?
It could be a person, a dog, the family house, or a place you went back to. Tell me about it and I'll let you know what's possible and what it costs.