Tuesday's Tips and Techniques for Watercolor Painting

A Clean Brush is a Happy Brush

Even watercolor painting brushes need a good cleaning every now and then.

I like to use The Master's Brush Cleaner and Preserver.  They're slogan is "Keeps Brushes Like New."

It's a nice mild soap for cleaning your brushes.

If you need a helpful how to or step by step, check out my old Tuesday's Tip post from 2009:

http://ritasquier.blogspot.com/2009/07/tuesdays-tips-and-techniques-for_21.htmls

Tuesday's Tips and Techniques for Watercolor Painting

The Dreaded Dirty Palette

There's nothing worse than having a fantastic idea for a watercolor painting and wanting to begin right away, then you open up your palette and it is dirty!

If it's really dirty and messy, you gotta spend time cleaning it up. It could take a while and if you only have a short amount of time to paint, you will end up spending most of it cleaning up your palette. You can't paint a quick, bright, beautiful painting with a sloppy muddy palette.

For me, the yellow is always the dirtiest.

When you're done painting for the day, clean up your palette. Wipe out the mixing area with a damp paper towel or a sea sponge. Take a damp flat watercolor brush and swipe off the tops of the paint wells.

The next time you go to paint, you will be ready to go with a clean palette.

Tuesday's Tips & Techniques for Watercolor Painting

Clean Your Palette!

This is a super important tip, especially if you want to create watercolor paintings with bright beautiful colors.

If you are like me and have tube paints squeezed into a palette and allowed to air dry, it is important to clean your palette when you are done painting for the day.

If you have a problem creating muddy paintings, perhaps one of the problems is dirty colors.

Simply take a damp flat brush and swipe it over the top of the color a few times. Rinse your brush and repeat on each color. Wipe up the large mixing tray too with a damp sea sponge or damp paper towel.

There is nothing like starting a new painting with a clean palette of gorgeous colors.