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Watercolour Materials and Tips

Generally you have to wait for each wash to dry before continuing to paint. (You may find it is good to work on 2 or 3 paintings along together to avoid being idle while you are waiting, or use a hairdryer.)

You need to be pristine clean, with 2 water tubs – 1 for adding to the paint (distilled preferably) and another for washing your brushes.

Watercolours need to go behind glass, with a mount so that the painting does not touch the glass. Also a waterproof backing is needed. This is to prevent mildew over the years.

Various water based paints have different qualities, such as: Acrylic – which is no longer water soluble when dry and comes in transparent, opaque and fluorescent varieties

Gouache – which is opaque water based paint, water soluble when dry – much like the early poster paints. There is even a range of water soluble oils available these days.

Watercolour pencils which give drawn lines or shading, but can form a paint when wetted with water via a brush. 

Finally there are the Pure Watercolours - which usually relates to finely ground water soluble pigments. Watercolour paints come in tubes and in pans 

A Palette needs to have dishes for mixing different coloured washes before applying. If I were using the tubes, I would put out the colours needed in the small hollows and mix washes from them in the large ones by taking a little paint across and adding water.

Brushes need to be soft (usually synthetic these days but I prefer to use pure bristle) and hold plenty of paint.  The larger the painting, the bigger the brushes needed – although some small ones for detail will always always necessary

Large “mop-like” round ferrule brushes are best for big washes – always care for them by pointing them up after washing & blotting – then store them handle down in a container.

There are also watercolour pencils available which are handy for small "sketches" travelling studies.

Watercolour papers come in different weights, smooth). Most are acid free to help avoid mildew in the future.  Anything lighter in weight than 300 gsm needs to be stretched so that it will not buckle when washes are applied – so personally, I only buy 300 gsm. 

With opaque paints such as acrylic and oils, it is usual to work from dark to light in establishing your composition…however with watercolours it is the other way around.   You need to work from light to dark, preserving the transparent integrity of the washes

Sometimes it might be useful to use masking so that you can apply washes right across over and later peel off the mask to reveal white paper.  Mask comes as film frisk in sheet form and masking fluid in a bottle. 

Welcome to the Wonderful World of Water Colour Painting