Intro to Painting: Watercolor

Watercolor is a simple and fun way to begin painting. It’s a low cost, easy to learn activity that allows you to express your creativity. Watercolor sets typically aren’t expensive and come with a brush so all you need to begin is watercolor paper and water!

Before you begin painting pictures, I suggest practicing techniques on small squares of paper.  Obviously watercolor painting involves water but the specific use varies and helps create effects. The brush you’re using can either be dry or wet, and the paper you’re painting on can either be dry or wet. When both are wet, the colors are going to run together and the paint will expand throughout the entire area that is wet. This creates soft edges and is good for creating backgrounds. Having a wet brush and dry paper will create images with more defined edges but still gives a light, “washed out” shade to the area you paint. Having a dry brush on wet paint typically creates soft edges with darker pigment where your initial brush strokes are as the color fades as the paint expands though the water. The last combination dry with dry creates very sharp edges and saturated lines; it is useful for very detailed pictures and gives you the most control over where the paint is placed.

By mixing different paints together using water you can create new colors. Since you can change the transparency or the paint using water, its very effective to create shaded images by laying colors. The best result in doing this is to either darken or lighten a color and layer it with the original. Also, you can make a gradient by mixing different amounts of two similar colors, such as red and orange, and layering.

You can blend colors to create various shades by softly blending colors together with your brush on the paper with water. This can be done with either wet paper, a wet brush or both. You can use paper towels to keep the water from running through the paper to make sharp edges.

Some other interesting techniques can add texture to your painting. You can put salt on watercolor when its wet to create a rough texture by rubbing the salt off when the painting is dry. Also, you can place plastic wrap over top of certain areas of your painting when its wet to add a 3D element to your painting. Gently scrunch the plastic wrap after its been places over top of a wet surface, let it dry and pull it off. The paint will collect in certain areas making some spots darker and some lighter. This technique can also be useful in creating shadows. Another way to create effects is by splattering paint with your brush or blowing on the paper to spread the water throughout the page.

There are many other techniques in addition to these you can learn to enhance your watercolor skills. With practice, you can design and create beautiful artwork using watercolor paints.