Watercolour
Watercolour is transparent: light passes through the paint, bounces off the paper and back. You work from light to dark, and the white of the paper is your white.
Step by step
- Use proper watercolour paper — heavier paper such as 300 gsm (140 lb), ideally cotton, buckles less. Tape it down or stretch it.
- Flat wash: tilt the board slightly, load a large brush and lay overlapping horizontal strokes, picking up the bead of paint at the bottom of each stroke.
- Graded wash: as above, but add more water to each stroke so the colour fades.
- Wet-on-wet: paint into damp paper for soft, blooming edges — skies, backgrounds. Wet-on-dry gives crisp edges for detail.
- Glazing: let a layer dry completely, then paint a transparent layer over it to adjust colour and value.
- Plan your whites. Paint around them, or protect them with masking fluid. It is hard to get white back once it's gone.
Common mistakes
- Working on thin cartridge paper that buckles.
- Overworking an area until it goes muddy.
- Painting into a wash that is half-dry, which causes 'cauliflower' backruns (unless you want them).
Practice exercise
Paint a page of flat washes, graded washes and wet-on-wet blends, then a simple sky-and-hills landscape using only three washes.