Dry Watercolor, How to Paint With Watercolors, Stretch Thin Watercolor
Paper, Use a Decent Watercolor Brush, Watercolor Paint, Watercolor Paper
Isn't Identical, Watercolors, Watercolors Dry Lighter
A good way to learn how to paint with
watercolor paints is to start with watercolor pencils. Once you've
mastered them, move on to paints and you'll be a Pablo Picasso (or
whatever artist you admire) in no time. Not every brush stroke will be
exactly how you imagined it to be, and sometimes (believe it or not),
mistakes can make your work a beautiful masterpiece.
From a technical point of view, learning to use watercolor is simple:
add water to the paint, put brush on paper, and you're painting. It's
the beginning of an exciting and intriguing artistic journey. These 10
watercolor painting tips will help you avoid basic mistakes and get
better results right from the start.
With watercolor paint, a color will always look more intense (stronger and darker) when it is wet. A color will always be lighter and paler when dry.
It's
something you get a feel for through practice and experience. If your
paintings look insipid, make the colors more intense by using more paint
and less water, or painting another layer of a color over the first.
2. Test a Color First :
Watercolor paint dries very fast, so test a color on a scrap of paper or
on the edge of your painting before using it. That way you'll know
whether it's the hue and/or tone you're after.
3. Dry Watercolor Remains Soluble :
Even once watercolor paint has dried, it remains water soluble. You can
re-wet the dried paint with water on a brush and it will 'turn' back
into paint. This means you can lift the paint off the paper to fix a mistake,
lighten a color by removing some of it, or even mix it with new paint.
Though you do need to be careful you don't scrub at the paper too much
and damage the surface.
4. Watercolor Paint is Transparent :
Watercolor paint is transparent.
You can see through the layers of color you've painted, making it near
impossible to hide mistakes. Don't fight against this, but embrace it
and work with it.
5. Light to Dark :
Because the white in watercolor comes from the white of the paper, not
the paint itself, the usual advice is to paint from light to dark. To
start with the lightest colors and tones, and build your way up to the
darkest. But don't be afraid to experiment with putting down dark colors
early on in a watercolor painting, as it may turn out to be an approach
that works for you
6. Use a Decent Watercolor Brush :
Rather have just one, good brush than a handful of cheap ones that splay
out and drop hairs. It'll save you a lot of frustration. A good brush
retains its shape so you can get a very fine brush mark from the point;
it holds a good quantity of paint so you need to reload it less often.
7. Don't Add Too Much Water :
Avoid inadvertently adding more water to your paint after you've washed
your brush by dabbing the brush onto a dry cloth before putting it in
the paint again. If you've loaded a brush with paint and decide you
needed less paint, hold clean cloth at ferrule end of the brush hairs to soak up some of the excess. Doing it at this end helps keep the pigment at the tip of the brush.
8. Watercolor Paper Isn't Identical :
The label "watercolor paper" covers a lot of variations. Not only in the
thickness of the paper, but also how smooth the surface is and how
'white' it is.
9. Stretch Thin Watercolor Paper :
The more paint you use and the thinner the sheet of paper, the greater
the likelihood is that the sheet will buckle. This can be prevented by stretching the paper first.
10. Masking Fluid Mistakes :
Masking fluid or frisked is very useful for blocking off areas where you
don't want the paint to be. But do check first that it'll come off the
paper, as it'll soak into very soft paper and then not come off without
destroying the surface of the paper.
Dry Watercolor, How to Paint With Watercolors, Stretch Thin Watercolor
Paper, Use a Decent Watercolor Brush, Watercolor Paint, Watercolor Paper
Isn't Identical, Watercolors, Watercolors Dry Lighter
