I wanted to be able to paint waves that did not look like a human hand had painted them. One can paint a wave in Oil or Pastel or even watercolor and it looks like a wave.. well it looks like a painting of a wave but it is not the same.
An oil painting wave… Foam
A Wave painted with chalk pastel.
But I wanted energy and a wave that looked like water did it not I. So it had to be watercolor. Watercolor is the only medium where something other than I holding an implement can move the pigment around.
So today’s lesson is about problem solving. Find your vision. What do you want to say then try what ever you can think of to say it. Look at other’s work. If you see something that will help you say what you want to say ask that person how did you do that little mark that looks like a bug? BE specific in your question forming. Be as observant of what you want to paint and of another’s rendition of it as you can.
I found one person’s work that had a little bit of what I wanted. I studied that work. She let water move the pigment in small areas then moved the paper. I took that and ran! So I studied the chemistry of pigments and what they do to each other. Red tends to push blue around. I studied the physics. Different drying rates create different affects. Different squirt bottles make different movements. Different ratios of pigment and water dry at different rates and create different movements on the paper (physics).
See how pastey this picture looks compared to the one at the bottom of the page?
Ruffled Feathers Sold
And of course gravity. Rolling the paper, pulling the corner of the paper off the table, spinning the paper all created different affects. 
The more ‘tools’ I could discover the more ‘words’ I had to tell my story. I also learned that a brush totally ruined the affects. So no brushes!