Watercolour

As its name suggests, watercolour has to be diluted with water to make its colour transfer to the paper. Unlike acrylic and oil paint that stay essentially where they are applied – and also dry as apllied – watercolour has a “independent” movement that has to be taken into account by the artist, as water is an active element of the picture. This is the greatest challenge and pleasure of working with watercolour, the option to hold back or release this water movement. However, this method of painting offers a unique transparency that is very hard to achieve with other paint types.

The most common support for watercolour is heavy paper, which may have different textures (porosity).

Working with watercolour can be very diverse, below you can take note of some of the techniques:

Wet on wet

Apply diluted watercolour on previously moistened paper. As soon as it touches the paper, the colour spreads out within the water and they blend well, thus new colours can be formed.

Dry on dry

This technique consists in applying the watercolor with a dry brush on dry paper. The watercolour stays only where it is applied, the bristles of the brush are apparent and the colours do not blend easily.

Wet on dry

Applying the watercolour with a wet brush on dry paper. The watercolour stays only where it is applied, the colours blend well and the brushstrokes are well delineated.

Wet on wet – Wet on dry

Below you can see the difference between the wet on wet and the wet on dry techniques. Note that on the picture on the left side, the watercolour reacted with the water on the paper and spread out. In the painting on the right, the red colour was applied on the background and it dried out before de blue colour was applied. The result is that the blue brushstroke has stayed only where it was applied.

Different textures

Instead of painting with the traditional brush, there are many other techniques to use the watercolour, making different effects and textures possible. Some suggestions can be noted from the image below.

Mixed techniques

It is very common to use watercolour combined with other painting tools, such as ink, fountain pen and pencil. See example below.

Watercolours offer the possibility to blend themselves with each other, resulting in a new colour from this mixture. Despite what the common knowledge might suggest, one can get better results mixing lemon yellow, magenta and cyan rather than the three primary colours.

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