I have been creating watercolors for about a year now, since retiring from a career as a graphic designer. Graphic design taught me many things that I was able to incorporate into my paintings, such as values – lights vs darks, composition, focal point, dimension, texture... the list goes on and on. But watercolors are unlike any other medium and many say it is the hardest medium to work in and the most unforgiving. For instance, if you make a mistake with watercolors you can't paint right over it to cover it up with another color like you can with acrylics or oil paints. That's because watercolors are transparent, and though you can layer one color over another, the bottom color will still show through. The yellow that you paint over a blue will give you a green, not blue. And you have to plan our paintings based on putting the lightest colors down first, then the next slightly darker color, then the next and the next. You can not put a light color on top of a dark color. It simply will not show. So these are some of the limitations to using watercolors.
I have still grown to love working with them, and this is due largely to the many tutorials I watched and tricks and techniques that I learned, some basic, others unique. One basic rule about watercolors is what happens when you put wet paint onto dry surface (as in watercolor paper), vs if you put wet paint on a wet surface. When you put wet paint on dry paper, you get hard edges, and solid pigments that stay in place. And if you put another pigment down next to it, the 2 colors will not mingle, they will stay where you put them. This is not true when putting wet paint on a wet surface. When the paper has been sprayed or brushed with water, the color you put down will disperse or spread over an small area of the paper, creating soft-edged colors that are darker in the center and fade out towards the edges like a sunburst. And if you put another color down next to it the two will blend. So one needs to know this beforehand before starting a painting. What is the look you are going for? And you can certainly use both techniques in the same painting. You just need to let the painting dry before using the wet on dry technique and inversely you need to wet the part of the painting where you want to create the other effect. There is also one last way of putting down paint and that is dry on dry. When you put watercolor on your paintbrush with little to no water and apply it to dry paper you get a scratchy-looking brushstroke. The paint does not go down smoothly, it has a rough texture to it. But in many cases, this may be exactly what you want to achieve. There is also the method of glazing, which is when you put a color down, wait for it to dry, and then add a darker shade of this color or a slightly different color to get a deeper effect. This is often done on part of an object to create "shading" to make it the object appear more realistic.
Then there are the fun techniques you can use to create different and unusual textures. Textures are important in a painting because they create more dimension and interest. One of my favorites is adding plain table salt to a part or all of the painting. This must be done when the paint is still wet. Just shake out some fine or coarse salt depending on how great an impact you want, and wait for it to dry. It changes the colors of the areas where the salt particles landed making tiny starbursts. The more salt that is used the more apparent it is and you can see somewhat raised textured areas. Another technique is to add tiny drops of alcohol to a painting or an area of a painting. Again, the paint must be wet when applying the alcohol, and where you drop the alcohol, little rings in a lighter shade will appear. They are very delicate but very apparent and something that would be hard to accomplish any other way.
Stamping and stenciling are also fun to add interest and texture to a painting. For stamping you need to buy rubber stamps of your choice that can be found on Amazon. They can be patterns of all shapes and sizes or realistic items like flowers and plant life. They often come in a varied 10-pack. They are then pressed into a stamping pad made of water-resistant archival ink, of which there are many colors, till they are completely covered and then pressed onto the watercolor paper. You can create amazing effects with stamping. I have sometimes used 2, 3 or more stamps on a single painting. Stenciling is a similar technique. Once again you need to buy your stencils – easily on Amazon. They also come about 10 different ones to a package. You just lay the stencil where you want the pattern or image to go and with a sponge filled with watercolor that is not too wet, you press the sponge onto the stencil making sure to cover the exposed parts of the stencil. It's as easy as that.
Then there are different ways of applying your paint aside from a paintbrush. This is where I really get excited because you can get completely different looks using paints applied with something other than a brush. My favorite method is using a cut up credit card. I cut them in different sizes depending on what I want to do. I then make a huge amount of pigment often in 2 or 3 colors, dip my credit card into the colors and drag the credit card across the page in any way I like. You can do one color at a time as well. The results are fascinating. Another trick you can do while the paint is still very wet on the paper is to spritz the colors with a tiny water bottle. It makes the colors explode into sprays of color. This is particularly useful when creating a landscape. The color bursts look like vegetation in the background of the page. Spritzing wet paint with a water bottle is a great way to make the colors on the page run into each other in a way you can't achieve with a brush. Applying paint with a palette knife also creates a unique look. You can move the paint around in swirls or patterns with ease. I often have 2 or 3 palette knives loaded up with paint and use them alternately. It's a very different look than using a brush. One can also make vertical or horizontal lines with both the credit card and the palette knife. And of course brushwork can always by applied on top of the page once the underneath layers have dried.
So I hope this has been helpful and has given you some new ideas to think about when approaching watercolors. One last thing. There's nothing nicer to finish your watercolor piece than to have a clean white border around it. To do this just place your painting on a slightly larger piece of cardboard and using 1/2" or 1" watercolor tape, mask about .25" inch of your paper on all four sides. When your piece is finished and perfectly dried gently tear off the tape and you will have a beautiful white frame around your piece to really set it off! Have fun painting!
Watercolor techniques, tips and tricks I use to create my watercolor paintings
