Watercolor Painting Tips & Articles
Welcome to the Watercolor Painting section of CreativeSpotlite.com. On the following pages you will find an awesome selection of step by step watercolor painting demonstrations, techniques and tips that I am certain you will find enjoyable. The watercolor instruction on the following pages has been generously donated by professional artists from all over the world. We are most grateful for their generosity and we hope you enjoy! Happy watercolor painting! |
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How to Choose a Brush for Watercolor Painting
A good question to begin is whether you need a brush for small works or for large paintings. This may come as a surprise to you; it did to me. I've always painted rather small. About 11x15-inches at the largest, hence I have accumulated an outfit consonant with that: small Kolinsky round brushes (number 8 through number 10), 1/2-inch flats, 10x14-inch paper blocks, old, recyclable photo frames from thrift stores, etc. Thus I was quite shocked to see, on those Saturday morning PBS art programs, examples of work nearly as big as a house door done with almost a housepainters' flat brush! Both size regimes are okay, but they require very different brushes....
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How to Stretch Paper for Watercolour Painting
This article is a guide to stretching paper for watercolour painting, using the traditional 'gummed tape method'. If you are using paper 356 gsm (260 lb) or less, it is normally considered essential to do this, otherwise the paper is likely to cockle after you paint on it. As an alternative to this method, you can buy commercial paper stretchers, that work in much the same way. However, two advantages the commercial paper stretchers have, is that they don't take as much getting used to as the gummed tape method, and they allow you to dry the paper with a hair drier, meaning the whole stretching and drying process could take minutes instead of hours. But for this article, we will use the gummed tape method.
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The Difference Between Watercolors and Acrylics
Learning the differences between acrylic paint and watercolor paint can be helpful in deciding which medium to choose. Personal preference will play a role in this decision, but having some information about the qualities of each type of paint will help you to make your choice. I suggest experimenting with both...
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How to Paint Luminous Shadows in Watercolor
Painting luminous shadows in watercolor can change your painting from good to great! Many people perceive shadows to be gray, and that is how they paint them. They often end up looking dull and opaque. Why not add colorful and interesting shadows to your work....
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How to Paint Hair in Watercolor
Painting hair in watercolor calls for imagination and letting your creativity flow. This is the fun of the medium. You will want to give your subject's hair depth and interest, as well as variations in color. Never simply paint brown hair brown...
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Pen and Wash - Know Your Watercolors
In a pen and wash painting, the attributes of watercolors are like personality traits of a person, what makes a person, or paint, different and unique. Each artist creates a style of their own knowing their watercolors. Understanding three attributes of your watercolors will make selecting and mixing easier--and fun....
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Watercolor Instruction - Observation
How do we capture the intangible: a fleeting expression, a character that is revealed in the sparkle of an eye or an emotion that can fill a room with atmosphere? These are not things that you can touch so how can an artist paint such things? How can we achieve a richness and depth of emotion and feeling in our paintings?
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Learn to Paint - How to Stretch Watercolor Paper
Learn to paint the right way by reading this article. It is very tempting to get right on with the process of creating your next masterpiece but the truth is that it is well worth spending some time stretching your watercolor paper. The problem is that paper of less than 260 lb (356 gsm) needs to be stretched before you use it otherwise it will simply warp if you do not do so. The good news is that it is a pretty straightforward process and one you can do yourself. Read the rest of this article to learn how to do it properly.
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Accidental Watercolor Good Fortune
I started making watercolors about eight years ago, and one of the most wonderful things about the process is that you just never stop learning. And, with watercolors, it seems, a lot of the learning process isnt exactly learning at all: rather its a type of insight into the mysteries of paint and life.
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An Idea for Your Skies Edition 1 Vol. I
The problem: Paint a sky which moves from blue to a yellow sun without getting green. Begin by choosing a blue and red from your palette which will produce a pleasing purple...
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Drawing Attention to the Center of Interest Area of Your Painting Edition 3 Vol. I
There are several ways we can cause viewers to look at the particular area of our painting we’d like them to see. This is, after all, the way we communicate with another person through our paintings...
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Proper Use of Water and Paper Wetting in Watercolor Painting
Probably the single characteristic which makes watercolor different from all other color mediums is the fact that it is the only one in which the medium actually penetrates the surface onto which it is painted. This accounts for the brilliant translucence this medium is famous for...
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Glazing, Blending - How and Why
While these are quite separate watercolor techniques there are some important ways in which they are similar...
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Getting Color Compability Into Your Paintings
In the early going we seem to want to get exactly the same colors from our reference photograph into our painting. The writer was one of those. At one time more than 70 pigments were ready for use so that matching the colors was possible...
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Keeping the White of Your Paper with Frisket and Tape
For a lot of reasons we’d like to keep the white of our paper while painting. Maybe the area is a vine with leaves which is too small to paint around without leaving water marks...