To get you started with some easy watercolor paintings, here are some watercolor techniques and tools you can use in your paintings. Lets get right into it!
Painting Techniques
1. Create Washes
A wash means a thin, transparent layer of paint applied to a surface. It is used to paint large areas with color, tones and texture. They are used by watercolor artists to create a background hue before working on the painting further.
Almost every watercolor artist uses washes in their painting, so it's a technique a beginner should also try their hand at. Washes can be made in one color or as a gradient between two colors. All you have to do is wet the paper before applying paint on it in either one or two colors. If you use too many colors, there's a chance you're painting may seem muddy, so the limited the palette the better for washes.
There are two main kinds of washes : A Flat wash and a Graduated wash.
In simple words, a flat wash is when you fill the whole area of painting with a single color. And a graduated wash is when you combine two or more colors to form a graded background.
2. Wet- on-Wet
You may or may not have heard about this technique before, if not, the name implies what you do in it. The wet-on-wet technique is simply applying wet paint to an already wet layer of paper. This gives the painting a more soft look as the paint easily settles on the wet paper.
This technique is used to achieve soft backgrounds for paintings, as it gives a very natural look.
3. Wet-on-Dry
Similar to the wet-on-wet, the method for this technique is in it's name as well. You start with a dry paper and apply wet paint to it. This technique, contrary to the wet-on-wet, gives a more sharp finish. It is used to making clear shapes with sharp edges. It's great for adding details and precise strokes.
4. Dry Brushing
The dry brushing technique is similar to the above ones except it's more like a dry-on-dry technique. You use a dry brush and apply very little paint to it, before applying the brush on a dry paper. This technique creates some interesting textures on the paper which could be considered grass-like. So this technique is great for making grass, fur or hair.
5. Add Salt
We all have table salt or sea salt at home right? Well it can also be used in painting! By adding some salt to a wet layer of watercolor painting, you can achieve some really cool textures once the paint dries. This technique is quite unpredictable but also beautiful at the end.
6. Use a Sponge
When applying a wash of paint to your paper, you can use not only a brush but also a sponge! Using a sponge gives your wash more texture and creates a background with more depth. The interesting textures you can achieve from using a sponge are quite a lot. So try it out and experiment the different techniques mentioned above with it !
7. Use a Masking tape
The wet-on-dry technique may give us sharp edges and is a lot more controlled than wet-on-wet, but to ensure that your paint and water stays in a certain boundary and that you get fine edges as the frame of your painting, use a masking tape. You can use it for not just the edges but also in the paintings own details for example when you're painting the horizon you need to have a crisp line to define it between the sky and ground, so using a masking tape right below the horizon and the painting the sky will end with the horizon have a more defined line.
8. Lifting
Lifting is a technique, that means literally what its name is. You lift paint off your paper when it's still wet to create patches of less color and interesting texture in your painting. It's quite a fun method to create various things in a painting, for example clouds!
In case you're wondering how you lift the paint, you can use a simple tissue and lightly dap it in the area you want the paint to be lifted.
9. Mixed Media
If you're one to use the wet-on-wet technique but you still want to give more defined details to your painting, using mixed media in it isn't a bad idea. Wet-on-wet as discussed previously ends with a very soft look, so to give more sharp and precise details, using other paint mediums or watercolor pencils or normal pencils may be a good way to add those details.
There's no rule in painting that says you have to stick to one medium, so think outside the box!
10. Dot Art
Dot art quite literally explains what we do in it, but let me elaborate. This is a wet-on-dry technique which uses drops of water with different paint colors in them to give an array of colors. The drops are applied to a dry paper and so they dry to fine edges. They dry to give an interesting texture and the more variety of colors or paint you use, the better the result.
11. Use Rubbing Alcohol
Similar to Salt, Rubbing Alcohol has an fun effect on a layer of wet watercolor paint. The alcohol pushes the pigment around making unique circular patterns on the paper. It's an interesting technique used by many in abstract art.
12. Splattering
This technique means to splatter paint on the paper to achieve small or large spots of paint. It can be used to give a certain texture to the painting. All you need to do is let your first layer dry and then take a brush loaded with water and pigment and fleck it onto the paper. If there are any areas you don't want the paint to splatter on, you can cover it up with a tissue, paper or even a masking tape.
Upon drying it gives a very natural texture akin to small particles in the mud or so, and can be used to give texture to several objects.
13. Bleeding
The technique of bleeding colors is highly used in watercolor painting as the paints fluid nature allow it to naturally blend with one another creating a fun effect. You can try it by painting two different colors side by side in a wet-on-wet technique and then you can watch as they interact with one another.
Tips to Remember when Painting
1. Work from Light to Dark, or thin to thick as that's the best and easy way to work with a painting.
2. Have paper towels or tissues nearby because you're going to need them.
3. Try to sketch out and plan your painting before getting started.
Is Watercolor Painting difficult?
Many people find watercolor painting more challenging than other paint mediums, due to many reasons. If you can slowly practice each of it's features, you may find it less challenging. These features include it's transparency and layering process, it's unpredictable and flowing-ness, it's pigment control and understanding of color values and light.
These factors make watercolor different and challenging, but if you practice and try to understand it instead of simply labeling it as 'too hard', you can make quite the progress in your skills and can slowly view it's differences as it's beauty.
I hope you found this article inspiring and helpful in anyway. If you have any questions or feedback, do not hesitate to comment or reach out. Do check out my other articles if you can!
Thank you for Reading!
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