Beginner's Watercolor Painting Guide: Supplies, Steps, and Techniques

Would you like to try your hand at watercolor painting? Here are three things to consider before you can run full speed ahead:

1. What supplies do I need to watercolor paint?
2. How do I use the brushes, paints, and other materials when I start watercolor painting?
3. What techniques do I need to know in order to understand to get the look and textures that I want in a painting?

Here is what I'll be covering to help you immerse yourself in this art form:

• Materials You'll Need
• How to Use Your Watercolor Painting Materials
• Easy Techniques to Try
• How do I use watercolor pencils?
• Can I use acrylic paint to watercolor?

• Basic brushes
• Good watercolor paper
• Palette
• Water jar
• Paper towels/soft cotton cloth
• Watercolor paints

Basic Watercolor Brushes

Buy four good quality sable or synthetic watercolor brushes. You can add more brushes to your collection later if you wish. I prefer sable brushes, but some artists like the synthetic ones because they are not quite as soft. These are the brushes I'd recommend starting with:

• #4 round
• #8 round
• #10 round
• 1" flat wash brush

Good paper is expensive, but it will make a difference. Get at least 140 lb weight paper in a watercolor block or single sheets. Look for 100% cotton, acid-free paper. You can use less expensive paper for your practice, but you'll find that every painting looks better on fine quality paper. I like Arches or Windsor Newton 140 lb. or 300 lb. cold press watercolor blocks. Some watercolorists prefer hot press paper because it is smoother. It's a matter of preference.

You can use a large, plain white dinner plate to start out or purchase a white plastic palette with at least six or eight wells and a flat place to mix your paints. Later, you may want to invest in a covered plastic palette, as it will be easier to protect your paints from dust and reuse them.

Water Jar

Use a glass or plastic container that holds about a cup of water. You may even want two water jars, one for rinsing your brush and a clean one for wetting your paper. An easy way to always have water jars on hand is to keep empty food containers that aren't affected by water. These can include:

• Baby food jars
• Pasta sauce jars
• Applesauce cups
• Sour cream containers

Paper Towels or a Soft Cotton Cloth

Fold up a cloth or some white paper towels to keep near your palette to blot excess water or paint off your brush.

The watercolor paint available on the market is mostly comprised of two main ingredients: finely ground pigment and gum arabic. The pigment gives the paint its color. The gum arabic acts as a binder and is used because it dissolves quickly in water. The water dissolves the paint, allowing the brush to pick up the colored pigments and place them on the paper.

Watercolor paints come in pans or tubes. A basic set will contain eight to ten colors. I prefer tube colors, but good quality pan colors are fine. Purchase student grade or professional grade watercolors. You will find that each artist has their own idea of what a basic set contains. This is my list of basic colors:

• new gamboge yellow
• yellow ocher
• burnt sienna
• sepia
• cadmium red
• alizarin crimson
• cerulean blue
• hookers green
• Payne's gray
• a neutral tint

What is the best watercolor paint?

The answer isn't a hard and fast one. Here are a few factors you want to consider.

• Paint Colors: Different brands offer their own colors, and there's no real right or wrong way to approach what colors you purchase. It's up to you to decide what you want to add to your collection, so consider what you want to pursue painting. If it's florals, you'll likely need a variety of greens, pinks, purples, reds, and other colors that help you capture the intricacies of each flower. If you want to paint beach scenes, you'll definitely need a variety of yellows, blues, greens, and grays to capture the ocean waves' movements.
• Permanence: This factor judges a paint's ability to keep from fading or deteriorating in quality when exposed to humidity and light. Artist quality paints will last a lot longer than student quality paints, but they're the more expensive option. Think about what you're creating, your skill level, and if you want to keep what you're painting for years to come.
• Paint Quality: You'll find two different types of paints: artists' quality and students' quality. As you can imagine, the artist quality paints are better quality and more concentrated, but a higher price tag accompanies these characteristics. Student quality paints are lower quality, but they are more affordable and can be great for beginners who want to learn how to use paints without the fear of wasting money.
• Method of Use: While the paint quality differs depending on different factors, it's also important to consider what you plan to do with your artistic venture.
  • Are you going to mainly stay at home and paint scenes from your garden? If so, choosing to use paint tubes is a very viable option for you.
  • Are you planning to use your watercolors while on the train or during your travels? If so, you need to consider the portability of paint, and selecting a paint pan may be the wiser option.
• Brand Options: No paint brand is perfect, so again, the one you choose to get paints from are up to you.

Before starting your first painting, it is important to become familiar with the way your paints, bushes, and paper work together. Practicing a few different methods will help you when you are aiming for different textures, smooth blending of colors, or a gradient of one color.

1. Set up your palette.

• If you are using a plate, just squeeze a few colors on the edge. Space them far enough apart so they don't run together. If you have a palette with wells, you can squeeze each of your colors into individual wells.

2. Test the dilution of color.

• With a wet brush, pick up some of the paint and swirl it around in the center of your palette.
• Add more water to your brush if the color doesn't move around freely.
• Stroke a few strokes of paint onto a practice piece of paper and try spreading it out to produce a gradient that goes from darker to lighter.

3. Experiment with different brush strokes.

• Try some broad, flat strokes with your flat wash brush. Try dipping one of your round brushes in water and turning it to make a fine tip. Pick up some paint and draw some fine lines.
• With the same brush, pick up some color on the flat edge of the brush and use just the edge to create lines or grasses.
• Load a round brush with more paint and use it on its side to create a texture that skips across the paper.
• Pick up a bit of paint on the tip of a round brush, spread the bristles flat, and try dry brushing on dry paper for a feathery look.
• A good quality round brush will form a point if it is rolled slightly as it is loaded with paint. Use a light touch to paint fine straight or curved lines with the pointed tip of your round brush.

Here are a few basic techniques you should practice before attempting a painting:

1. Broad, flat strokes for large, smooth areas.

Use your 1" wash brush to mix a color with some water and make a puddle of paint on your palette. Pick up the color with your dampened brush and brush a smooth area with the color.

2. Creating a gradient.

A monochrome gradient is painted by using strong color at first and then adding water to thin and lighten the color. Since you do not add white to watercolors, you will get light colors by applying a thinner application of the same color.

3. Use the edge of a flat brush for sharp lines.

Make sharp, dark lines with the edge of a 3/4" flat brush. This technique is excellent for grasses or deep, straight shadows. Load the edge of your brush with color and practice using the edge of the brush to make deep lines.

4. Paint textures with a dry brush technique.

Painting with a fairly dry brush on dry paper is a great way to create rough textures. Heavily load a damp #10 round brush with a dark color. Use the brush on its side and pull it up along a tree trunk or a barn board. The paint will skip slightly, giving some very dark texture while leaving white highlights.

Painting on dry paper is a good way to get intense colors, detail, and texture in your work. As long as your brush does not have too much water on it, the paint will stay where you put it.

• You can use very tiny brushes to add fine detail or larger ones to create texture in wood or trees.
• Combining dry brush techniques with rough paper will leave white areas in the painting that sparkle with light.

Hint: If you intend to paint a soft background behind a building or tree with a lot of texture, be sure to do that first with a wet-on-wet technique. Your background should be perfectly dry before starting on the textured areas—otherwise, they will run.

The wet-on-wet technique is basically where you add wet paint to areas that are still wet from a previous layer of paint. Here's how to achieve this look:

• Use your 1" flat brush to wet a 6 inch square of paper. If the paper is too wet, blot gently with a paper towel to pick up excess water.
• With the same brush, mix some gamboge yellow with water and apply to the top one third of the area.
• In the middle third, paint a fairly wet strip of sap green.
• On the bottom third, paint a strip of Payne's gray.
• Pick up the paper and tilt it slightly to let the colors blend into each other.

Painting on wet paper can give backgrounds and skies a delicate blend of colors that flow into each other. This is why wet-on-wet painting is a good technique for landscape. With a little practice, you can learn to put just the right amount of water on your paper to achieve the look you want.

Try This Practice Landscape Exercise:

1. Unless you are using a watercolor block, tape your paper to a flat board.
2. Use a large, flat wash brush to wash the whole paper with water. Spread it so the paper is wet, but make sure there aren't any puddles.
3. Choose a sky color. For this exercise, I used cobalt blue. With a 1" flat brush, paint a smooth coat in the sky, darker at the top of the paper and lightening it up as you get to the horizon line.
4. Dip your dampened brush into a neutral tint or Payne's gray. Add a few cloudy areas. If your paper is still fairly damp, the gray will blend into the blue while still keeping the cloudy shapes. Don't overwork the sky or clouds. Once the color is on the paper, let the colors flow into one another for a natural, soft look.
5. Let background dry naturally or quicken the process with a hair dryer before moving on.
6. Use the edge of your flat brush to pull out some grasses from the deeper green areas.
7. Add a few clusters of tree trunks along the horizon. Then, paint in some foliage on the distant trees. Deepen the green shadows.
8. Using a natural tint on a round brush that is fairly heavy and dry, roughly paint in a tree trunk and some branches.
9. If you wish to paint some foliage on the tree, wet irregular areas where the leaves will go and drop in some bits of yellow ocher in the branches and on the ground.
10. While the paper and color are still wet, add some areas of cadmium red and sap green. The colors should flow together slightly.

What are watercolor pencils?

Watercolor pencils are an art medium that combines drawing and painting. They look like normal colored pencils, but the watercolor effect is created when you add water to the drawing. An advantage of using these pencils is the ability to create very fine details that would be much more difficult by using a brush.

What You'll Need:

• Paper
• Watercolor pencils
• Water

How to Use Watercolor Pencils

1. Sketch out the drawing you want to create.
2. Add watercolor pencil details wherever you want the paint detail. Slowly build up the layers and add water to them so that you can control the intensity of the colors.
3. Use a water-dipped brush to dissolve the pigments left by the pencil.
4. Try experimenting by using the watercolor pencil to add details to a wet surface. It will still work fine, and you can see what effects can be created by trying it at different wet factors.
5. Make sure to use a thick paper, preferably watercolor paper, for these pencils. As you add more water, thinner papers will buckle strangely and distort the painting. If you want to use the pencils on a smoother surface, I suggest using illustration boards because they can handle the water but are a lot smoother than watercolor paper.

When you feel comfortable with your supplies, try painting simple subjects or landscapes. The painting does not have to be perfect. Keep experimenting and enjoy the creative process!

Take a look below to see more resources on getting equipped for the watercolor journey:

• 5 Watercolor Painting Tips and Techniques for Beginners
• Watercolor Techniques for Everyone

• How to Make Colorful Bookmarks Using Easy Watercolor Techniques