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.

Tuesdays Tips and Techniques for Watercolor Painting

Tuesday's Tips & Techniques for watercolor painting is back!

The Brushes are Ready & Waiting!

First tip of the new year ... just paint!

It's about time you start painting again or perhaps it's time to start painting period. Winter is a great time to paint.

Get out your brushes, paper, watercolor paint, a bowl of water. Find a comfy place to sit and spread out your supplies. Dip those brushes in water, then load the brushes up with paint and swash it all across your paper.

Paint with no abandon!

Tuesday's Tips and Techniques for Watercolor Painting

Try a New Color: Neutral Tint

Every now and then I love to try a new color. This one has me curious ... neutral tint. Interesting title and interesting purpose. A color to make other colors darker without going warmer or cooler in hue.

How dark can it go? How light will it be?

To find out, I made a little value chart for this tube of paint.

Next I will mix this color with my existing palette colors to see how it blends with and tints the colors.

This tube of Neutral Tint is made by M. Graham & Co., an excellent quality American made watercolor paint.

Stuck in a rut? Try a new color. Create a value chart to see how deep and dark it will go. Create or add to your color mixing chart to see how this new color mixes with your existing colors.

Tuesday's Tips and Techniques for Watercolor Painting

Just Paint!

Grab a brush, fill a few containers with clean water, choose your favorite palette and find a piece of watercolor paper.

Sit down in your favorite painting place and simply ... Paint!

No worries, no cares, have fun and enjoy yourself.

Just do it ... just paint.

Tuesday's Tips and Techniques for Watercolor Painting

My Favorite Paint

I Love MaimeriBlu Watercolor Paint!

The colors are brilliant. They are extremely colorfast (they don't fade over time on me.) They are excellent for adding to your palette and letting them set up and dry before using. They liquify easily when swiped across the top of the well with a wet brush. The texture and smoothness of the paint is excellent. It is a superior artist quality watercolor paint made in Italy.

Shown in the photo are the colors I suggest using in my painting classes.

A bonus tip for today ... just paint!

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

Choosing Colors

Choosing colors for your watercolor palette can be fun for some and frustrating for others.  Keep it simple.  A warm and a cool of each of the primary colors, plus 2 neutrals and 2 hard to mix colors green and purple.

For my classes, I suggest starting out with 10 colors: 

Warm Red - Crimson Lake

Cool Red - Primary Red Magenta

Warm Yellow - Indian Yellow

Cool Yellow - Permanent Yellow Lemon

Warm Blue - Ultramarine Blue Deep

Cool Blue - Primary Blue Cyan

Two Neutrals - Burnt Sienna & Payne's Grey

Purple - Permanent Violet Bluish

Green - Permanent Green Deep

The brand of paint I use for my classes is MaimeriBlu, an Italian superior artist quality paint.  Most of the colors are transparent.  Two are semi-transparent and also sedimentary, burnt sienna and ultramarine blue deep.  Different brands may have slightly different names for colors.  Plus colors with the same name may appear and act differently in the various brands.

Tuesday's Tips & Techniques for Watercolor Painting

Got a Color You Don't Want in Your Palette?

I paint in watercolor.  I like to squeeze tube paint into a palette and let it dry.  I label the side with the name of the color and the lip with a T for Transparent, S for Semi-Transparent and an O for Opaque (but I try not to use opaque colors).  I use a Sharpie marker.  If you make a mistake or replace one color with a new color, simply swab it with a bit of nail polish remover.  Let it dry and then you can relabel it.

But have you ever put a color in your palette that you don't want there anymore?  Or perhaps you have used almost all of it up, and you want to put fresh color in there or a different brand in that spot?  Maimeri Blu used to have a gorgeous Sap Green.  But then they couldn't get quality pigment any longer for the color, so they discontinued it.  I have been trying other brands of Sap Green and so far no luck in finding a replacement.  So, now I have Sap Green in the slot where I do not want it.  What to do? 

1.  Wet the edges with clean water on a brush, scrub around the edges just a little.

2.  Use a palette knife and work it under all around the edge on all sides.

3.  Work the palette knife under the base and grip the wad of paint with your thumb.

4.  Using your fingers, pull the lump of paint out of the palette square.

5.  Voila ... the square is now empty, the paint has been removed.

6.  Swash a wet paint brush around, scrubbing a bit to loosen up any remaining bits.

7.  Wipe out with a damp sea sponge.

8.  Now you have a clean empty square to fill with fresh paint.

9.  I place the paint I have removed in my scrap palette, a simple butcher's tray.

Waste not want not! :)

Tuesdays Tips & Techniques for Watercolor Painting

Chart the Colors in Your Palette

Whether you have one palette or several like me, it is a good idea to make yourself a chart of all your colors.  You can do this if you have colors dried in a palette or even if you use your colors fresh from the tube.  Count up all the colors you have and create a grid on a sheet of watercolor paper.  I drew my grid in pencil with more boxes than colors I have, because in the future I will most likely try more colors.  What size you make your grid is up to you.  My chart has 2 inch squares on Arches cold pressed watercolor paper 15" x 19".  I painted one swash for each color and then labeled each square with the name of the color written with an india ink pen.  At the top of the page, I wrote Transparent Maimeri Blu Watercolors unless otherwise noted.  WN = Winsor & Newton, H = Holbein, O = Opaque, S = Semi-Transparent.  I tried to group my colors together, first row reds, second row yellows, then blue, green, purples and neutrals.  

A color chart shows you the array of colors in your palette(s) at a glance.  It can be very helpful in choosing the colors for your next painting.  Sometimes a color appears differently dried on the palette than dried on paper.  You can also check your chart to see the full name of the color and the brand when it comes time to order more.

Old Paints

January 2009, inspired by nature and an old palette filled with strong earthy color.  This is just a snippet of a little 5x7" watercolor painting I created with my old Winsor & Newton watercolor palette.  I used this palette of colors between 1995 & 1998 and the colors are just as vibrant today as they were back then.  The paints were squeezed into the palette and allowed to dry, a few drops of water and they perform the same as ever.  

Tuesday's Tips & Techniques for Watercolor Painting

One of the things I would like to add to my blog this year is an occasional post on watercolor tips and techniques.  I would like it to be a weekly thing, but we will see what happens, I am going to shoot for Tips on Tuesdays!  Here we go ... 

Watercolor Paint

One of the most important things when learning to paint with watercolor or improving your watercolors is the use of quality paint.  If you're not using quality artist grade paints, you may not get the range in value in your painting.  You also may not be able to get nice rich dark colors.  Artist grade paints will have more pigment and less filler.  Student grade paints will have more fillers and they may not have as good a quality of pigment in them.  Student grade paint should be left to students of high school age or earlier.  If you really want to learn to paint watercolors, start with artist grade paints.  

My current favorite paint is Maimeri Blu Watercolors.  I teach watercolor painting classes for beginner and advanced adult students.  The colors I recommend for my classes are pictured in #1 of the photo shown, there are 10 colors total.  I prefer to squeeze the tubes of color into a Tom Lynch palette and I allow them to dry before I use them.  This method saves on paint and is more economical than using the paint fresh from the tube.  Photo #2 shows my class palette, plus 3 extra colors.  Photo #3 are my Zoltan Szabo palettes, I had taken a bunch of his workshops, which I absolutely loved.  The two palettes on the right in that photo show the colors he recommended in his workshop and the one palette on the left is my test palette for new colors.  These are great palettes for traveling.  Photo #4 is my small travel Hommee palette, great for taking along on an adventure or a hike.  Photo #5 is my very first palette and it is filled with Winsor Newton paints and more earth tone colors.  When I first started to paint with John Alderdice, he recommended the colors shown and the Winsor Newton Artist paints.  He always said to use the best quality available.  Which would remind me of my college days and the saying "garbage in, garbage out".  Photo #6 shows my scrap palette.  I have taken a butcher's tray and placed the colors I have removed from my other palettes around the edge of this tray.  I remove colors from time to time from my regular palettes if they get too low or if I decide I would like to switch a color for a new one.  No need to waste the paint!  Sometimes I will squeeze just a little bit of a new test color onto this palette.

I highly recommend Maimeri Blu watercolor paints, they are Italian.  They set up well in a palette and they refresh easily with the swipe of a wet brush.  They have excellent lightfastness, so far I haven't had a single MaimeriBlu watercolor painting fadeand I have been using the paint since 1998.  The second brand I would recommend are the Winsor Newton Artist Grade watercolor paints from England.  You can't go wrong with such a well known brand.  However, the Winsor Newton paints set up harder in the palette, I find it best to add a few drops of clean water to the tops of the colors in the palette before painting to get them to soften up a bit.  I am testing another brand of paint, I purchased only one tube so far of M. Graham watercolors which are made in the United States and so far, so good ... I really like it.  The M. Graham prices are similar to the Maimeri Blu paints and on some of the colors, the price is better.

Artist grade paint gives you rich deep gorgeous colors.  If you think it is too expensive, start out with fewer colors.  A limited palette of colors is a great way to really learn your palette.  Buy the best you can afford, you're worth it!