Three Crucial Watercolor Skills You’ve Got to Know
If you are a beginner to the world of watercolor – then welcome to this mysterious world and let’s learn some of its wonderful magic together!
- Skill #1: Mixing
- Skill #2: Moving the bead
- Skill #3: Blending
Create & Learn…
There’s a quote from Benjamin Franklin that goes something like this… “Tell me and I’ll forget. Show me and I may remember. But involve me and I will learn.” This concept is so true! I can’t tell you how many times I’ve read something in a book or watched something in a video – and then once I tried to apply that said skill or concept, the idea suddenly seemed to escape me.
That’s why today – I’m not just going to be talking about the three crucial skills you’ve got to know when it comes to watercolor – but also demonstrating to you how those skills work in an actual illustration, as well as giving you the opportunity to follow along with me and paint this sleepy little bunny named Frank. So if you want to follow along with me and paint your very own Franklin the Bunny – make sure to check out the link in the description below to snatch up your very own drawing to paint along with me. Okay – that being said – let’s go ahead and begin…
Skill #1: Mixing
The first skill every beginner must know is the mixing skill…
And this doesn’t just include how to mix your colors but also how to dilute your paints with water.
Diluting Your Paints
The five starting ratios – there are a number of ways to mix your water and paint – but over the years I’ve found most paint-to-water ratios start in five stages – no water, chunky, inky, milky, and finally watery.
Straight from the tube with no water added, you’ll rarely use this ratio for actual painting unless you’re going for something special. Adding a little water gets you the chunky stage, which is also rarely used. From there, the inky, milky, and watery ratios are the three you’ll reach for most – inky for rich, intense color, milky for the ratio you’ll use most often, and watery for light tinting. I have a whole course that breaks this concept down in much more detail if you’d like to go deeper.
Understanding Color Intensity
The next step to the mixing skill is learning how to mix two or more colors together. Start by evaluating which color is the more intense one – what I like to call the “bully” color. Blues and pinks especially tend to be bully colors that will completely take over a less dominant color when mixed. For this illustration, my bully color was black ink, which could easily overpower my soft purple.
Which color you dilute and tint first depends on the result you want. If you want a darker color that’s just slightly tinted, start with the darker color, dilute it, and then tint it with the lighter color. If you want a lighter color with just a hint of a different hue, start with the lighter color, dilute it to your chosen ratio, and slowly tint it with the darker color. Since I wanted more of a gray for my bunny, I diluted my dominant black ink first and then slowly added in purple to tint the mixture. Once you have your color mixture down, it’s time to move on to our next crucial skill…
Skill #2: Moving the Bead
The Rules of Painting
When it comes to watercolor, believe it or not, all watercolor washes are painted with the same premise – the simple idea of moving a ball or droplet of color smoothly along the page. It’s actually a lot like coloring, but with two very important rules! One – never outline a shape! And two – always move in one direction. This means taking your paint and starting in one location, then constantly moving forward until the shape is complete.
Never outlining your shape matters for two reasons. If you move backward over paint that’s already starting to dry, you’ll create unwanted blossoms and texture. And because watercolor is transparent, an outline you paint first will still show through once you glaze color on top of it – so keep filling in one continuous direction instead.
Refueling Your Brush
Perhaps the one thing people ask me the most about my paintings is how I achieve such smooth washes or layers of color. What I’m about to tell you is my trade secret for creating those smooth washes!
The way you create smooth transitions in your paintings is by constantly evaluating the bead – or droplet of paint that you are basically hockey-puck-ing across the surface of your paper. As soon as you start to see that droplet of color wane thin, it’s time to refill your brush and immediately add your new paint into that bead of color on your page. Then keep pushing your bead forward, not allowing the new paint to blossom backward and create unwanted textures.
Skill #3: Blending
And Finally…
The last skill you absolutely need to know when working with watercolor is how to blend your colors. There are actually two ways to blend colors in a painting – the first is painting gradients, which I might cover in another video – but the second is the lazy man’s way of blending colors, which I’ll be teaching you today.
Blending Colors
For this skill, you first want to paint a smooth flat wash shape in your illustration, then allow the paint to dry just slightly until it appears to shimmer with a thin layer of color. At this precise moment, with your brush, dab just slightly the edge of your shape in strategic locations with a harmonious color – a color that works well with your first color. Since I painted purple first, I decided to use a French ultramarine blue as my dabbing color. Personally, I tend to use this method to add colored shadows to my paintings, such as on Frank’s hat and coffee cup.
And That’s It!
And those are the three crucial skills you’ve got to know when it comes to watercolor! Now that we know our skills, let’s break down how to paint Frank our bunny using them in the next lesson!
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