Watercolor Painting Techniques

Watercolor offers a wide range of creativity, making it an art medium of wide diversity. Because watercolor involves water, the process goes quickly and is one of the most free forms of painting. Unlike acrylics and oils, it's not as easy to cover up mistakes as many watercolor pigments are transparent and staining. Watercolor is a medium where it's important to know the differences between the different techniques and watercolor pigments, doing many experimental paintings before you're ready to frame a watercolor.

Watercolor is a painting medium that uses water-soluble pigments, which are mostly transparent. Although several pigments are opaque. An art form that creates artistic representations on paper, watercolor painting is usually done on cold-pressed watercolor paper that has more texture than smoother hot-pressed paper.

The flat wash, the most basic watercolor techniques, is done by wetting the area of paper you plan to paint and then thoroughly mixing enough pigment to cover the area. Pigment is worked from top to bottom on a slight slope which somewhat overlaps horizontal bands. Flat washes are ideal for painting solid colors as in buildings and foregrounds. The graded wash, usually done when painting skies, involves washes that are more diluted with each band of horizontal strokes. This produces a wash that gradually, although evenly, fades out. The wet-in-wet wash applies pigment onto wet paper, producing shapes which range from slightly blurred to softly undefined, depending on the degree of saturation. Besides used by itself, the wet-in-wet technique can also be used over existing washes which have dried. This wash is ideal for suggesting subtle background areas of a painting. Unlike the wet-in-wet technique, the dry brush technique serves the opposite purpose. A brush loaded with much more pigment than water is drug over dry paper, producing hard edges and crisp marks. As dry brushing tends to come forward in your watercolor, it's better to use it around the center of your painting's focal point. Glazed washes uses transparent watercolor washes on top of consecutive layers of dried colors, producing results that are glowing as well as transparent.

Different masking techniques are used to stop paint from seeping into areas of a painting that you want to remain white. Once the wash has dried, the masking material is removed, showing the white of the paper. Masking tape is used to mask off areas such as in painting white fence posts. Maskoid is a masking fluid which is painted onto watercolor using an old brush. Then paint is applied over it and you can remove it by gently using a natural rubber pickup made of the type of crude rubber found on soles of shoes.

Spattering is the technique of using small colors and tones built up from small dots of color. Usually paint is flicked onto a canvas from an old toothbrush to depict anything from small pebbles to sand. Scratching out is used to create items such as grass. It's done using the end of a brush, scratching from bottom to top on wet paper with pigment. Scumbling is done by loading a brush with stiff paint and then fanning out the brush's bristles to work over the paper's surface in circular motions. Blotting paper can remove excess moisture before applying the brush to paper. Sponging is a technique which uses either old kitchen sponges or natural sponges sold in art stores. The mottled patterns produced by sponges are excellent for depicting textures as in weathered rocks and stone to tree foliage. Knife painting is a technique of working pigment with the tip of a knife blade to create strokes for landscape objects such as grass blades. When painting with a knife move the knife quickly but with a light pressure so you don't hurt the paper's surface. Strokes should taper off naturally. Use salt to create rain or snow by shaking a saltshaker onto a wet sky. Rock salt creates even larger drops. Spray alcohol into wet pigment to create interesting textures as ocean waves.

After a watercolor pigment dries, most of the color can be lifted off, using a clean brush dipped in water. Use a tissue to plot off the pigment. However, staining colors such as alizarin crimson, Prussian or Phthalo blue and Windsor red are more challenging pigments to remove. Sponging produces better results when a light color is applied over a darker underpainting.

When doing a flat wash, make sure the wash is totally dry before continuing or you'll ruin the wash. Because some pigments dilute faster than others do, test graded washes in different colors, keeping records for references. When using masking tape, use heavy, higher quality watercolor paper that won't tear when you remove the tape.