Watercolor painting has gained popularity as a fine art medium today because of its fresh look and speed of application and clean-up. An artist can achieve many techniques by applying paint in a variety of ways: wet into wet, and dry into wet, with sparse applications of salt achieve many interesting textures.
Because of its transparency, corrections are tricky and difficult to achieve satisfactorily and not be visible. Many times, the artist has just one shot at painting a sky, mountains, rivers, etc.
After graduation from college, I worked as a merchandise illustrator in a retail store's advertising department illustrating everything from fashions to shoes, handbags, jewelry, and home furnishings. Those illustrations were all done in watercolor, the one "color" was lamp black. The full-color watercolors shown here are all done on Arches 140 lb. cold press paper.