Watercolor Painting

Watercolor painting has its own challenges. If you look at watercolor paper, you’ll see it is very thick so it can stand the amounts of water used without warping (at least warping too much).

Some painting styles require the watercolor paper to be dampened before any paint is applied. This technique is used for a “flat wash.” In this case a single pigment is spread in horizontal bands. The paper is laid on a sloping surface so that the paint will even itself out as it dries.
“Wet in wet” uses paint applied to a wet surface. This allows for easy blending of colors on the artwork, including intentional blurring.

Other times, paint is applied to dry paper. Paint may be applied with a dry brush followed up with a wet brush to give what is called Lost and Found edges (lost is soft, found is hard) or applied with a dry brush either to give sharp focused lines or the brush used at an angle so that the pits of the watercolor paper stay unpainted.

More next week.