How to Improve your Watercolor Painting

Anyone can learn to paint in watercolor. I listed this article as Easy, because if you are an absolute beginner, you have nowhere to go but up. You can improve your painting easier than an expert. Watercolor isn't an easy medium but if you take it in a lot of baby steps you'll find it convenient and beautiful.

Difficulty: Easy

Instructions

Things You'll Need:

• Sakura Koi pocket box of 12 or 24 colors
• Watercolor journal
• Watercolor paper sheets, pads, blocks, your choice.
• Internet access
• Optional watercolor pencils
• Optional waterproof fine point pens like Pigma Micron or Prismacolor Archival or Pitt Artist Pens in black or colors.

1. 
   Sakura Koi 12 color pocket box set, brush assembled. Photo by Robert Sloan.

   Get the supplies that will make it easy to do a lot of small quick watercolors without much fuss. A pocket set is best for that. I mentioned the Sakura Koi 12 color pocket box because that is the most convenient one I've ever used -- 12 half pans of good watercolor in well chosen strong colors with a waterbrush. The waterbrush is essential to quick and easy practice. If you can't get the Koi set or already have a good set like a Yarka Professional or Winsor & Newton pan set, just buy the water brush separately. Niji's waterbrush is good too.

2. 
   Example color chart for Winsor & Newton Artist Field Box.

   Buy or make a watercolor journal. Mine is a Moleskine leather bound one that my daughter bought me for my birthday in 2007. She had one and I seriously admired it. You can make an inexpensive one by getting a cheap ring binder and a hole punch. Then get sheets of 140lb watercolor paper (student paper is 90lb and will warp more than the thick 140lb kind), cut them down to fit in the binder and punch holes in them. You can add as many pages as you have paper for, the advantage of the ring binder is it may be expandable. A plus is to get one with a window pocket on the front and back so you can put your best paintings on display as the covers.

3. 
   12 color chart of Winsor & Newton Artist Field box as sample color chart.

   Chart the colors in your watercolor set. Your watercolor journal is the best place to put this because you will always be able to find your color charts when you're looking to decide what colors to use. This sample is the chart for another 12 color set I own, the Winsor & Newton Artist Field Box that I use mostly for doing ACEOs and other miniatures because the brush is so tiny. It's also the first half page in my watercolor journal.

4. 
   Four trees from my watercolor journal inspired by Bob Davies videos on painting trees.

   Once you do have all your supplies lined up, which can include more paper and types of watercolors than I mentioned in the supply setup, relax. You're going to use your watercolor journal like a sketchbook to try things out in. Go online and search YouTube for watercolor instruction videos, there are plenty of good ones. I've listed some good sites for articles and downloadable ebooks too under Resources. Find as many free instruction goodies as you can online and try the paintings in them. If you don't have exactly the same colors, use the nearest ones. If you don't have exactly the same brush, improvise or if you really want to try the ones done with flat brushes, add a flat watercolor brush to your supplies. Niji makes a flat waterbrush that can make that easier.

5. 
   Practice page of sumi-e strokes in monochrome dark blue.

   Get a good book on Sumi-E Japanese Ink Painting, mine is "The Sumi-E Book" by Yolanda Mayfair. This is because the monochrome sumi-e techniques will expand your skills in composition, in different kinds of strokes you can make, in ways of seeing your subject and most of all in being able to simplify a painting to make it more powerful rather than paint in every fussy detail from a photo without filtering them at all. Sumi-e practice improves anyone's watercolor painting. Do some traditional Asian monochrome or simple multicolor paintings paying attention to the white space and not covering the whole page. For this practice you can use pages of lighter weight 90lb student watercolor paper because you're not dealing with massive washes that can cockle.

6. 
   Winter Oak, in Sakura Koi 12 color pocket box watercolors with waterbrush

   As my sumi-e book suggests, try turning each stroke exercise into an actual painting. Start with one stroke to try that stroke, then build on that one to create whatever subject it suggests to you. This is a powerful inspiration tool even for the expert. It's starting from scratch and painting from imagination, freeing yourself from strict realism and fear of failure. The more often you do these, the more of them will come out as stunning, beautiful paintings.

7. 
   Watercolor landscape 4" x 6" by Robert A. Sloan painted from imagination.

   Paint every day if you can. That's why the supplies include a watercolor journal and the easiest pocket box on the market. It takes no time to grab that little box and a journal, turn the page and paint whatever's on your desk in front of you, or whatever the first stroke makes you think of. Just screw the brush on the reservoir, give it a squeeze to start the water, touch a pan and start painting. It's also small and packs up just as fast. Take your supplies to work during the week and paint on your break. A variation that's very handy for jacket pockets or women's handbags is to get a 4" x 6" watercolor block or pad for your daily paintings to use with the pocket box. You may have to set it somewhere safe to dry after your break if the day's painting has a big wash (blocks are bound on all sides and much better if you like doing big washes) but learning to paint fast is a good way to get over hesitation and lack of confidence. The more often you paint, the better you'll get, not the slower you paint.

8. 
   Hooded Oriole, watercolor and salt experiment 4" x 6" by Robert A. Sloan

   Start a free blog or use the blog you have to post your Daily Painting. There's nothing more encouraging at any level of skill than posting your work online and getting comments. Comments are usually encouraging. Even if you're a complete beginner, just doing daily painting and blogging it will show you and your blog readers how fast you progress -- and new painters progress very fast with practice and reading. Every time you try an exercise or step by step project, you'll get better results. Having the dated entries will show you how much you improved and your blog readers by and large will cheer you on, noticing every improvement.

9. 
   Orange Glass Paperweight, Prismacolor archival pens and Sakura Koi watercolor by Robert A. Sloan.

   Try other watercolor books, especially on styles you like when experts do them. If you love the super realistic crystal and silver type of still life paintings, get a book on painting silver and crystal. Work through it slowly doing all the exercises. Post them on your blog. You will find new inspiration and plenty of cheers. I always liked the Claudia Nice style of pen and ink with watercolor -- she sometimes uses colored pens, sometimes black pens, often fine point pen textures and rich washes. I finally bought one of her books, Painting with Watercolor, Pen and Ink at Amazon and did a glass paperweight that sits on my desk using her style. I used the bigger Sakura Koi set that had a bright pure orange and extra reds and yellows for this one.

10. 
    Hooded Merganser, pen and watercolor by Robert A. Sloan

    Find a good art community like WetCanvas.com or DeviantART where you can post your art regularly for comments and critique. Make sure it's a warm friendly one that's encouraging and that there are plenty of other painters at your level -- WetCanvas is very good because new beginners are always showing up, improve rapidly, and many professionals including authors of North Light books participate, teach classes and give tips. No matter your level, you'll wind up better than some and looking up to others in their specialties -- even if you're one of those professionals, you already know that some other artist inspires you and makes your jaw drop with something cool they posted. Many art sites also have challenges and prompts with photo references to give you ideas if you're not sure what to paint.

11. 
    A Little Busy, cat portrait in Sakura Koi 12 color pocket box by Robert A. Sloan

    Paint what you love. The kind of paintings you'd buy if another artist did them well are the things to try. If you're into marine paintings or lighthouses, do lighthouses and seascapes. If you love animals, paint your favorite animal again and again, different ones and different colors or a series of the same animal. If you like portraits, do the people you love and sketch the people you meet. Your best paintings will always be the ones that mean something to you -- that strive for something wonderful that's there in your heart and makes it to the paper on several successive tries. I love cats, always loved cats, and have spent years learning to paint cats well. I didn't always get it but the most recent cat painting I did from a challenge picture on WetCanvas posted by dupliKate of her cat Busy inspired the best cat painting I've ever done. Keep up these habits and time after time you'll be looking at the best painting you've ever done -- because each painting teaches you something and sometimes they come out exactly the way you wanted them. This one definitely did. Kate said "That's her! That's my Busy looking right at me" when she posted to it. I felt so good, knowing how I feel when any artist friend paints my cat, Ari. Happy painting!

Tips & Warnings

• Paint often. On weekends or when you have time, do several paintings at a time spreading out the early stages to dry while you start another. This is where it's convenient to get three or four small watercolor blocks bound on all four edges, especially if you like painting outdoors.
• Sketch and draw often. Learning to draw accurately helps a painter develop good observation and understand the shapes, textures, values and other tricks involved in representational painting. Try sketching with watercolor pencils so that when you paint over the sketch, your lines are close to the colors you used and dissolve completely. You may find that a set of watercolor pencils and a waterbrush are all you need to paint what you like when you want.
• Enjoy the process. Pay attention to everything fun about it. Try different textures like putting salt in wet paint or crumpling plastic bags on a wash. Play with the paint and it will release your creativity.
• Try using opaque watercolors, you can mix the white pan in the Sakura set with any of the colors to make a more opaque detail to put over a dark area. Experiment with it, it's not cheating if it gives you the effect you want!
• Try reserving white and light areas by painting carefully around them.
• Try using masking fluid to cover light and white areas to paint freely over them, then have them reserved when you peel it off.
• Try watercolor additive mediums like gum arabic or Winsor & Newton Iridescent Medium for special effects. See what these different additives do to a painting. Winsor & Newton Lifting Medium can be painted on before you paint and let you wash off white or light patches after it dries.
• Try it on Yupo. Yupo watercolor "paper" is polystyrene textured to hold pigment -- colors are vivid and brilliant, they don't soak in at all so they stay as strong as they looked when wet.
• Get a cheap hand held blow dryer to use to dry stages on a painting or even to push the paint around when it's drying. You can get great effects using a blow dryer.
• Have fun! Try crazy combinations like a blue and orange painting with no mixing or overlapping, do a pop art Warhol style rendering of a photo, try anything that looks interesting. You're only risking a piece of paper that costs less than a burger -- and your paintings will someday be so valuable they're worth more than you paid for the whole set or pay more than your job!
• Don't worry about getting it perfect. Try to do it the best you can and be proud of progress instead, because it takes more than one try to learn something difficult and watercolor painting is very challenging.
• DO NOT LICK THE BRUSH! Just don't get in that habit. It's very natural when you're a kid and children's watercolors are safely nontoxic -- but adult sets often contain toxic minerals like cadmium, lead and cobalt. Better safe than sorry. Train yourself not to lick the brush or drink rinsing water, ever, then you're free to use brilliant, powerful colors like Cadmium Red instead of settling for its nontoxic Hue. Just don't eat paint! Ever!
• Don't throw away ruined paintings even if it's horrible. Heavy watercolor paper, especially the good 100% rag watercolor paper, can be rinsed off, dried and reused as a tinted background for other mediums like pastels or colored pencils. Or once it's been rinsed, the ghost image and stains could suggest a completely different painting and inspire you to create something beautiful with watercolors!
• Don't go too light with your colors. If it looks right when it's wet, it will dry about half as bright and look too light. Mix your colors to be about twice as dark or strong as you want them, then when they dry they will look right. Practice will show you how much stronger to mix your specific watercolors -- some brands are better than others for keeping brilliance when dry. Yarka watercolors stay strong and don't need to be applied too much stronger. Artist grade ones are stronger too. Do a "dry and wet" chart, mixing a batch that looks right when it's wet -- then do a patch that looks like the wet patch when it's dry. It takes some fiddling but helps a lot to know how your specific paint will look when it's dry.

Resources

• How-To-Draw-And-Paint.com for free videos and articles on watercolor and other mediums
• DeviantART, an art community strong on manga and digital art but also watercolor and traditional art.
• Art community with forums, no flame wars, great classes and free instruction, helpful friendly membership
• Winsor & Newton company website, tons of free information in Tips & Techniques under Watercolor
• Explore-oil-pastels-with-Robert-Sloan.com, oil pastels including watersoluble oil pastels and wet techniques plus lots of articles by this author on basic drawing & rendering.

[lelai]

on 9/3/2009 my life long dream is to learn to paint. I have so much to express. Thank you for writing about learning about how to paint with water color.

[robertsloan2]

on 4/25/2009 Thank you, both of you! I'm glad it helps. These things are all cumulative, the speed of progress is always amazing when I do them. I've been doing this for a couple of months now and I thought I was already good -- but the things I did last year look clumsy compared to my new stuff.

[ilivetoteach]

on 4/25/2009 Very well-written and informative article on watercolor. I'm going to save it. *5

[jull14]

on 4/25/2009 I love the paintings, thanks for sharing with me this important information. Julia