Watercolor I: Materials and Washes

Watercolor is transparent, luminous and a little unpredictable: the water does part of the painting for you. It has a reputation for being difficult, but most frustrations come from a few causes: the wrong paper, too little or too much water, and overworking. Let's set you up for success.

Materials

• Paper is the most important choice. Use real watercolor paper, at least 300 g/m² (140 lb), ideally 100% cotton. Cheap paper buckles and pills and makes everything harder.
• Cold-pressed (medium texture): the best all-rounder.
• Hot-pressed (smooth): for detail and illustration.
• Rough: strong texture, loose landscapes.
• Paints: tubes or pans. Student-grade is fine to start; artist-grade has more pigment and brighter mixes. A small palette of 6–12 colors is plenty (see the split-primary palette in color mixing).
• Brushes: a round size 8–12 with a good point, a smaller round (size 2–4) for details and a flat brush (2–3 cm) for washes. Synthetic brushes are affordable and good.
• Two jars of water (one to rinse, one clean), a palette for mixing, paper towels, masking tape and a board.

Transparency and the white of the paper

Watercolor is transparent: light passes through the paint, hits the white paper and bounces back. That's what makes it glow. Consequences:

• There is no white paint (in traditional watercolor): the whites are the paper. Plan and preserve them from the start.
• You work from light to dark: you can add darker layers on top of light ones, never the reverse.
• More water = lighter value. You control value with the water-to-pigment ratio.

Water control

The most important skill in watercolor is managing how wet the paper and the brush are:

• Wet paper + wet paint: soft, blurry spreads.
• Dry paper + wet paint: crisp edges.
• Damp paper: soft edges that don't spread too much.

Watch the shine of the paper: glossy = very wet; satin = damp; matte = dry. Most "blooms" (cauliflower-like marks) happen when you add wetter paint into a drying area.

The three basic washes

1. Flat wash: an even tone. Tilt the board slightly. Load the brush generously, paint a horizontal stroke, and let a bead of paint form at the bottom edge. Pick up that bead with the next stroke, slightly overlapping. Continue to the bottom.
2. Graded wash: from dark to light. Same as the flat wash, but add a little water to the mix before each new stroke.
3. Variegated wash: one color flows into another. Start with one color and switch to another midway while everything is wet.