Different Types of Washes for Watercolor Painting

Video Transcript

" Hi! I’m John Junger. I do the paintings that we’re going to be talking about, the watercolors. I’m here representing expertvillage.com. In this video I’d like to shoe you several examples of the types of washes that I use and how I use them, which I’ll follow up probably in the next segment, with a demonstration of doing some washes. You really need to have some concept in your head as to how you want to lay down your washes. If you put them down in the wrong places, then of course it’s not going to work your painting. In this example, I’m working on this at this point and this is all basically wet and wet wash, meaning the whole paper was wet and I started at the top, and at the bottom at times. I laid in washes with the concept of the blue ridge mountains of Virginia, the light coming through the clouds, it being kind of a hazy morning. So, I use that hazy effect in the wash, leaving it some in light wash and dark wash. Then as if dried a little bit, I added washes for the mountains coming down into where the trees would be. As it dried a little more, I started bringing in the colors for the trees that are closer up and you see a little more detail and so forth. The more detail comes as the washes dry. If you want them a little fuzzy, work into the wash that’s a little wet. If you want them sharp, then you work in the dryer paper and dyer washes. "