MUST-KNOW, Simple Watercolor Techniques for Beginners
Watercolor is a beautiful medium for painting. Watercolor painting has some unique techniques you need to must know before you start watercolor painting. Watercolor can be intimidating for beginners, and even some experienced artists find it challenging. With these simple warm-up activities, you’ll begin to understand how watercolor works, get comfortable with your paints.
Wet-on-wet Technique
The wet-on-wet technique is typically used for painting landscapes, simple skies, or soft watercolor washes because the effect gives us a nice flowy look that can be applied in different ways. We’re adding wet paint to a wet surface and that paint spread on the paper very beautifully.
You can watch this below watercolor landscape tutorial to get a nice idea.
Wet-on-dry Technique
Wet-on-dry technique is used to achieve more precise and defined shapes. This is the technique I like most, and, in general, most illustration-style watercolors are achieved using wet paint over a dry area. You can also say this technique is a layering technique. You first implement some watercolor then that will dry and after you put some more color and it continues until you achieve a satisfactory result.
You can follow below painting technique. I hope you will learn some useful tricks.
Dry-on-dry Technique
The dry-on-dry technique is also known as a dry brush technique. As its name suggests, use only the minimum amount of water when picking up, then dry it out even more on a sheet of paper towel before lightly brushing it onto your paper. This technique is good for creating a rough-looking texture, or a shimmering body of water.
Flat Wash Technique
A wash is a thin, diluted layer of paint applied over a large area, often used in underpainting or to lay in the basic colors in a painting.
This first one is called a flat wash, where you wet the rectangular box with clean water, then put wet paint on — almost the same as the wet-on-wet technique, but here, you want a smooth, even layer of color. Use your largest flat brush to help, and paint in one direction to get the best results. You can also tilt the board around to help even the paint out. Try to keep the consistency of the paint you mix the same too, or to avoid having to mix it several times, prepare a bigger batch of the color you want to use before applying it to paper. And remember, whenever you’re finished with a wash, leave it alone to dry, as going back to change it or taking too long will cause the wash to become uneven.
Gradated Wash Technique
This activity is similar to building up color, but instead of working with plain water and different values of one color, we’ll be working with two colors and slowly transitioning from one to the other. It’s a great technique for painting skies and sunsets.
Use colors that are close together on the color wheel to create harmony. Otherwise, your gradient will appear muddy.
Summing Up
There is a lot more thing in the watercolor technique. But if you follow those basic techniques then you can able to paint a beautiful watercolor. I will recommend trying those techniques as per the guidance in the video.
Also, here is an awesome guide video with a different brush stroke.
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