There is one very important rule of watercolour -

There are no rules!

Have fun!
Experiment!
Enjoy! 

Painting for beginners:

• Buying watercolour materials

• Paint

• Brushes

• Paper

• Other materials - masking fluid, mediums, etc

• Stretching watercolour paper

• Painting tips for beginners

• Read all about it at amazon.com

Buying watercolour materials:

There is a huge choice of watercolour materials available. It can seem overwhelming to a beginner, but you can begin slowly and add to your collection of watercolour materials as you develop your talent.

As with most things, you get what you pay for. If you can afford it, buy the best quality. Rather buy fewer items than a lot of items of inferior quality. Artist's Quality watercolour paint goes a long way and good brushes can last a lifetime.

Student quality materials have their place, but you will soon see the superior quality of Artist's Quality materials. Take yourself seriously enough to begin with and you will soon be producing masterpieces! Keep your initial investment simple. Don't be tempted to buy every paint colour, brush and gizmo available.

I use Winsor & Newton products. Their quality is excellent and they are readily available just about everywhere. Click Here to find your nearest Winsor & Newton stockist. There are many products on the market that are also good - Schmincke, Lukas, Rembrandt, Daler-Rowney ... the list is long!

I will recommend a basic product set-up and expand on some useful extras too.

top

If you are smiling while you are painting, your audience will smile when they see your work

"Genius does what it must, and talent does what it can."

- Owen Meredith 1860

"In art, economy is beauty"

- Henry James

Good enough is usually not good enough

"O young artist, you search for a subject - everything is a subject. Your subject is yourself, your impressions, your emotions in the presence of nature."

- Eugene Delacroix

Paint:

Have you always believed that the primary colours are red, blue and yellow? Me too, up till a few years ago. I was constantly mixing muddy colours and couldn't understand why. With my background in the advertising industry, I knew that printers used 4 basic colours to print a colour magazine. These colours are known as "process colours":

• Black

• Cyan (blue)

• Yellow

• Magenta

It was the magenta that differed so markedly to watercolour paint. The primary colour RED is not really red at all ­ it's PINK. Though web colours can vary,
I think you will still see the difference here:

Now, the only time I use a real red is when I am painting something that is red - a postbox, Ferrari, fire engine. I never use red to mix colours.

OK, now that's cleared up, we can look at paints.

The magic and distinguishing feature of watercolour is its transparency. The "traditional" watercolour technique is achieved by using layers upon layers of paint to achieve a luminosity and depth seldom seen in other mediums.

Most watercolour paints are transparent ­ but not all. The cadmium colours, for example, are fairly opaque. But watercolours are not quite as opaque as gouache. Gouache is pigment mixed with chalk, whereas watercolour paint is pigment mixed with gum (more info).

I don't want to elaborate too much on watercolour technique at this stage, but it is useful to know that it is possible to achieve wonderful effects by applying one colour (say blue) over another dry colour (say yellow) to achieve ­ green. Try it with several different colours.

When purchasing watercolour paint for the first time, you really don't need many colours. In fact, you could get by with just 3! Before you spend a huge amount of money, buy just 3 colours and play. I would pick:

Ultramarine blue
Cadmium yellow
Magenta

These 3 primary colours, mixed in varying ratios and with varying amounts of water, can produce pretty respectable paintings. All those lovely colours in the art shops seduce many beginners. Rather wait until you have practised a bit!

Watercolour paint comes in two different forms:

• pans (or cakes)

• tubes

When I started painting in watercolour, I preferred the pans, but now I prefer the tubes. Buy a few of each and try for yourself.

Even if you are painting for the first time, buy the best paint you can afford. The Student's ranges are not as good and don't go as far as the Artist's ranges.

Once you have experimented with these colours, you can buy more colours, depending upon what you will be painting. In the Demos, I specify the colours that I have used.

top

"Painting is silent poetry"

- Simonides 460 BC

"The more I practice, the luckier I get"

- Gary Player

"In a few generations you can breed a racehorse. The recipe for making a man like Delacroix is less well known."

- Renoir

"Improvement makes straight roads; but the crooked roads without improvement are roads of genius."

- William Blake

Brushes:

I always thought that top quality ­ expensive ­ brushes were over-rated ... until I tried one! Winsor & Newton donated some materials for a workshop that I was conducting and that's how I came to try out a good brush. Now I'm hooked!

Nonetheless, I do think that these deluxe brushes are a bit wasted on a total beginner. Rather ease into watercolour gradually. By the time your inexpensive brush is ready for only doing trees, you'll be ready for a good brush or two.

Winsor & Newton has a very wide range of brushes, to cater for all levels. Today's synthetic brushes are excellent quality and are inexpensive. Begin by trying out a few different sizes, from small to large.

000 - the smallest size which I had to have for my postage stamp paintings. One 0 for each hair of the brush!
Biggest size ­ super for doing big areas of washes

In practice, you will probably seldom use these extreme sizes, so begin with an in-between size, such as a 5, 6, 7

In addition to different sizes, watercolour brushes also have different shapes.
Rounds and Flats are the most popular. Round brushes are described from 000 to ---, whilst Flats come in sizes measured in inches (e.g. 1/2 inch, 1/4 inch, etc). To begin with, try both. You will soon find your comfort level.

I use only Flats and I can't really say why ­ it's just one of those things! People who watch me paint tell me that I twist and turn my flats while I am painting, but I'm usually so caught up in the painting that I don't even notice these things. For some reason, when I use a Round brush I get very finicky and fussy. But you should experiment.

Brushes are also available for several "specialist" tasks. Examples include

• a fan shape (used for painting foliage),

• a rigger (so named because it paints thin lines, like yacht's rigging, very well ­ great for branches too),

Don't be tempted to buy every shape when you are starting out. You'll know when you're ready for these brushes.

A good indication of a brush's quality is its price. You pay a premium for a red sable or kolinsky brush. They are good for several reasons

• They carry more liquid, so you can take your brush for a walk on your paper for longer without having to re-charge with more paint

• They come to an excellent point, so details are easier

• They have a characteristic springiness to them, which gives individual brush strokes more calligraphic interest.
  

My favourite brush is the Cirrus range by Winsor & Newton. It's not the very top of the range, but then neither is my car a Ferrari!

Some art shops allow you to test brushes before you buy, which is a welcome option.

top

"To say of a picture, as is often said in its praise, that it shows great and earnest labour, is to say that it is incomplete and unfit for view."

- James McNeill Whistler

"He best can paint them who shall feel them most."

- Alexander Pope

I am an amazon.com associate.

Order a book via my site and I get points towards book vouchers!

"I had to create an equivalent for what I felt about what I was looking at - not copy it."

- Georgia O'Keefe

Paper:

Volumes have been written about paper! It's a huge and fascinating subject. For some great books about paper, click here to see amazon.com's selection of paper-related books - Paper

The choice of watercolour paper is pretty huge. I can tell you what I like, but it may not work for you. As is the case with brushes, you need to find your own favourite paper.

I most commonly use Saunders Waterford 300 gm rough surface. It's a medium weight (300 gm - or 140 lb ­ refers to the weight). I wouldn't recommend using a lighter paper because it tends to do weird and not-so-wonderful things when it's wet. And I ALWAYS stretch my paper. See stretching paper below.

Even if you're trying watercolour for the first time, use a good paper. It makes a world of difference:

• The paper absorbs the water-based paint easier

• The paint reflects its true colour

• When the paper dries again, it dries flat

Several paper manufacturers offer watercolour paper in block form. Now and then, I use these, usually in the field when big boards can be a hindrance. The blocks are gummed along the edges, so you can use the topmost sheet as though it were stretched to a board. Despite this, the paper does tend to buckle while wet. You should wait until the paper is completely dry before removing it from the block. TIP: To remove paper from a block, insert a dinner knife under the paper and detach it as though using a letter-opener. Most manufacturers leave a few centimetres unglued for this purpose.

Good watercolour paper has a neutral pH or is acid-free. Acid is commonly used to manufacture paper and it is this acid that turns ordinary paper yellow with time. Put a newspaper and a piece of watercolour paper in a dark cupboard for a year and you'll see the difference! In the past, paintings on paper were notoriously fragile, but modern paper-making technology has solved that problem.

Paper is available in different surfaces. I get totally confused by all the terminology ­ hot-press, NOT, cold-press it is probably all a bit more technical than it needs to be. I use mainly a rough surface. I find it takes the paint well and is suitable for a loose approach. Smooth paper usually allows for more details. If you're into detail, try the smooth paper first.

As with most art materials, paper's quality depends upon its price. Test them until you find the right one for you. When you've been painting for a few years, you will understand the quasi-religious devotion afforded to paper!

top

Other materials:

- palettes, masking fluid, mediums, etc:

... coming soon

top

"We must know, as much as possible, in our beautiful art ... what we are talking about - and the only way to know is to have lived and loved and cursed and floundered and enjoyed and suffered. I think I don't regret a single "excess" of my responsive youth - I only regret, in my chilled age, certain occasions and possibilities I didn't embrace."

- Henry James

"Art derives a considerable part of its beneficial exercise from flying in the face of presumptions."

- Henry James

Stretching watercolour paper:

HOW TO stretch watercolour paper

You'll need:
A sheet of good quality watercolour paper. I use Winsor & Newton's Saunders Waterford paper 300gsm rough surface
A thick board, bigger than your paper size
Gummed paper brown tape, about 10cm (±3 inches) wide

• Run a bath to a few cm/inches full.

• Rest your board horizontally across the top of the bath.

• Tear your gummed tape to the size needed (must be placed along all 4 edges of the paper). Keep it close by.

• Immerse a sheet of paper in the water for a few minutes, until it loses its surface sheen.

• Gentlly lift the paper out and place it flat on the board. Work as quickly as possible now, especially if you live in a dry climate like I do. Do not worry about air bubbles.

• Dip the strips of tape into the bath, take off excess moisture and smooth down on all 4 sides of the paper. Allow about half the width of the tape to cover the edges of the paper.

• Use a damp sponge to gently mop up excess moisture.

• Leave alone!!! Buckling is normal. Do not move the board or the paper until the paper is dry. Never put the board upright.
  

(If the paper is buckled when dry, cut it off the board with a sharp knife and re-stretch.)

Do not remove the paper from the board until your painting is completed.

Cut your painting off the board using a sharp utility cutter.

Trim the gummed tape off your paper.

top

TIP:

Don't try to hurry the drying process - if you put your board in the sun or use a blow-dryer, the paper is more likely to ripple. Leave your board flat until the paper is completely dry.

INFO:

When wet, watercolour paper initially has a surface sheen. This is due to the paper's "sizing", a sort of seal from the paper-making process that resists water. Stretching the paper "breaks" this seal, allowing watercolour paint to penetrate the paper more effectively. Without stretching, the watercolour paint tends to glide off the surface of the paper and also to form puddles.

"Errors are not in the art but in the artificers"

- Sir Isaac Newton

Painting tips for beginners:

When stretching watercolour paper, don't try to hurry the drying process - if you put your board in the sun or use a blow-dryer, the paper is more likely to ripple or buckle.
Leave your board flat until the paper is completely dry.

... more coming soon

top

Click on the amazon.com logo,
order a book ...
and I get free book vouchers!

Great painting books at amazon.com:

Find some inspirational books! These books have helped me; I hope they can help you too.

top

 "You never know what is enough unless you know what is more than enough"

- William Blake