These surprising and vivacious effects can be seen in the 1969 watercolor Aquarelle 1008-A. In which the colors are so fresh that they seem still damp, a witness to the timeless quality of his gesture and his trace.

There are several photographs that reveal his methods of working in watercolor. They show the painter before the work, standing at his drawing table surrounded by white dishes filled with pure colors, working simultaneously on several sheets of paper.

« And that’s what is surprising: in Estève’s watercolors there is indeed construction. A construction made of transparencies superposed forming an almost compact group condensating the light (…) having the transparency for material, it represents what painting can’t be”. Dora Vallier, introduction to the Catalogue of the Estève exhibition, Zurich, Galerie Peter Nathan, April-May 1973, p. 5