Tuesday's Tips and Techniques for Watercolor Painting

My Color Picks

I use Maimeri Blu watercolor paints in my painting classes. I recommend to my students a set of ten colors. A warm and cool red, a warm and cool yellow, a warm and cool blue, two neutrals plus a green and a purple. With this combination you can mix tons of colors.

The colors I recommend are:

Payne's Grey

Burnt Sienna

Crimson Lake

Primary Red Magenta

Indian Yellow

Lemon Yellow

Sap Green (if available)

Primary Blue Cyan

Ultramarine Blue

Permanent Violet Bluish

I have these laid out in my palette with the neutrals on the left. Starting with Payne's Grey on the lower left (then I have one extra neutral Sepia, rarely used) and Burnt Sienna. Across the top is Primary Red Magenta, Crimson Lake, Indian Yellow, Lemon Yellow. Down the right side starting at the top is a little bit of Permanent Green Deep (an optional green if Sap is not available), Sap Green, Primary Blue Cyan, an extra color Cobalt Blue, Ultramarine Blue, Permanent Violet Bluish.

It's great to have the basic ten and then add in a few of your own favorites.

If you want to go with a more limited palette, I would recommend:

Paynes Grey, Burnt Siena, Crimson Lake, Indian Yellow, Sap Green and Ultramarine Blue.

Tuesday's Tips and Techniques for Watercolor Painting

Colors Look Paler When Dry

Watercolor paint when wet can look very dark and vibrant and when it dries back the intensity of the color can fade back up to 50%.

If you want a painting with deep, brilliant colors you may need to paint them much darker than you anticipated.

Shown here is a sample of the same swash of colors. Using the same puddle of paint colors, the painting on the left is dry and on the one on the right is wet. Notice how much more vibrant the wet colors appear.

Something to think about when wanting to paint bright, bold color.

Tuesday's Tips and Techniques for Watercolor Painting

Color Trio Experiment

Have you ever tried painting an entire painting with only three colors? You would be amazed at all the different colors you can create by mixing only three colors. Start with your primary colors: primary red magenta, primary yellow and primary blue cyan. Mix them together and you have your secondary colors: green, orange, purple. Then there is your tertiary colors and so on.

Grab yourself a sheet of watercolor paper and do some test color swatches. Choose any cool red, yellow and blue. Swash them in a circle, in a straight line, however you choose. Blend each color with the next. Next try this with a warm shade of red, yellow and blue. Then be daring and try this color mixing experiment with any three colors on your palette and see what you come up with. There is a whole range of colors right there on your palette that I bet you didn't know were there!

Mix 'em up! After completing your experiment of colors, choose a set of three colors and now create a painting using only those three colors.

Tuesday's Tips & Techniques for Watercolor Painting

Creating Your Own Palette with Tube Paints

Here's a quick tip ... which can be considered to be frugal and save money on watercolor paint. Squeeze fresh from the tube paint into the wells of a watercolor palette. Use a palette knife to stir and level out the paints. Then tap the palette a bunch of times on your table top, to get the bubbles to rise to the top in the more fluid colors. Place your palette in a warm, dry relatively dust free and out of reach of pets place ... such as the top of your refrigerator.

Tube paints allowed to dry in a palette will last longer than using the paint fresh from the tube. There will be less waste. It is super easy to swipe a clean brush filled with water across the top to clean up a dirtied color. If you dirty up color squeezed from the tube, you will need to squeeze more out from the tube if you want fresh clean color. The tube paints dried in your own palette free up easier than pan paints with the swipe of a wet brush or spritz with a little clean water for some brands.

It will take about a week for the paint to dry up and be ready to use, depending on humidity. This way you can create your own palette of colors.

Tuesday's Tips & Techniques for Watercolor Painting

Layering the Colors in Your Palette

Layering colors is another way to create even more colors with the existing colors in your palette. You can expand the number of colors you have simply by layering them. Layering works best with transparent watercolors. You will have to really water down opaques colors for this process. To layer color, you paint over top of an already dry color. You can use the same color to deepen the color or you can use a different color to create a new color. You can't easily mix a layered color. The bottom color will glow through the top transparent color, this also creates a bit of depth to the color.

I created this chart on a quarter sheet of watercolor paper (11 x 15"). I counted the number of colors, in this palette there are 10. I drew 10 evenly spaced single lines in pencil, leaving some extra space at the bottom of the paper. Then I left a bit of space on the left and drew 10 evenly spaced vertical lines in pencil.

Using a 1/2 inch flat brush and following the pencil line with one edge of the brush, I painted a long straight horizontal line of each clean color. I allowed this to completely dry. Then I repeated the same process with each clean color painting vertical lines overlapping the already dried lines of colors. When this is dry, use an india ink pen or pencil and label each color on the ends. At the intersections of each color you will be able to see the variety of new colors you can create simply by layering the colors in your palette.