Watercolour for Beginners: Washes, Water and Working Light to Dark

Most students meet watercolour as the box of hard round pans in a school art set, decide it is difficult, and go back to poster colour. It is not difficult. It is different, and the difference is worth understanding, because watercolour is the medium most often reached for in the exam hall for landscape and still life alike.

The whole medium rests on one fact: the white is the paper, not the paint. You are not adding light - you are choosing which parts of the paper never to cover.

Light to dark, and never the other way

Lay the palest washes first across the largest areas, let them dry, then put darker layers on top. Each layer is transparent, so the colour underneath shows through and the two mix optically on the paper rather than in the palette.

Plan your highlights before you start. The white of a bottle, the shine on a mango, the light edge of a cloth - mark them mentally and paint around them. Once a highlight is covered, it is gone; there is no white paint coming to rescue it.

This is the reverse of poster colour and oil, where you build up to the light. Students who switch between media without switching habits produce muddy watercolours and wonder why.

Water is the control, not the paint

How light or dark a watercolour is depends almost entirely on how much water is in the brush, not on how much pigment. A dilute wash of any colour will be pale; the same colour barely thinned will be near its darkest.

Learn two states by feel. A wet brush on dry paper gives a controlled edge you can steer. A wet brush on wet paper gives a soft bloom you cannot fully control - perfect for skies and distant hills, disastrous for the edge of a building.

Keep two water jars: one to rinse dirty brushes, one clean for mixing. A single jar turns every colour towards the same grey-brown by the middle of a painting.

Let it dry - properly

The commonest mistake is impatience. A second wash laid onto paper that is still damp lifts the first one and leaves a hard-edged bloom that cannot be removed.

Work on two things at once if waiting is difficult: block in the sky on one sheet while a still life dries on another. In the exam, plan the drying time into your period allocation - running out of time because a wash would not dry is a loss you can prevent.

Stretch or tape the paper at the edges before you start if it is lighter than about 200 gsm, or it will cockle as it dries and every subsequent wash will pool in the valleys.

A first exercise worth doing

Take one colour and paint a strip of ten squares, from the palest wash you can manage to the darkest, changing only the amount of water. Do it again with a second colour. Pin both above your desk.

This tells you the working range of your paints, which is different for every box. Most students never find out and spend years using the middle of the range only, which is why their paintings look weak next to a demonstration.

Then try the same ten-step strip as a single continuous graded wash, pale at the top to dark at the bottom, without stopping. Get that right and skies stop being a problem.

• Palest washes first; plan and preserve the highlights.
• Control tone with water, not with more pigment.
• Wet-on-dry for edges, wet-on-wet for skies and distance.
• Two water jars - one to rinse, one to mix.
• Let each layer dry fully before the next.