Watercolor（水彩画） is the oldest paints known. It dates back to the early cave men. They discovered that they could mix the natural colors found in the earth with water. In this way they could add lifelike qualities to drawings of animals and other figures on the wall of caves. Fresco（壁画）, one of the greatest art forms, is done with watercolor, it is created by mixing paints  and water and applying these to wet plaster（灰泥）. Of the thousands of people who stand under Michelangelos’ works in the Sistine Chapel, very few know they are looking at perhaps the greatest watercolor painting in the world.The invention of oil painting by the Glemish masters in the fifteenth century made fresco painting go downhill, and for the next several centuries watercolor was used mainly for doing sketches（素描） or as tool for study. It was not until the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries that English painters put back watercolor as a serious art form. The English have widely-known love for the outdoors and also for small, private pictures. The softness o  f watercolor had a strong attraction for them.The popularity of watercolor continued to grow until the twentieth century. The United States took the place of England and became the cen  ter of watercolor. It produced such well-known watercolor artists as Thomas Eakins and Andrew Wyeth.小题1: The first watercolor users were___________
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was difficult to use