How to Paint with Watercolours

How to paint with watercolours

How to paint with watercolours and they come in either pans or tubes, I prefer paint tubes because they last longer and are more of an intense colour. Lovely fluid colours and effects can

be achieved by using watercolours and are of a totally different quality when you first put watercolour to paper. As with oil paints you really only need three colours, three blues, three yellows and three reds, naming the blues....ultramarine, Prussian, and cobalt or sometimes I might use cerulean, the yellows, I use cadmium yellow, raw sienna and yellow ochre and the reds cadmium red, burnt sienna and alizarin crimson, this is my palette but you might pick a totally different palette which is best for you.

Paper and Brushes Watercolours are usually painted onto a textured paper and the papers range from a fine tooth to a really grainy tooth and it is best to use a good weight of paper like 140llb, anything less than this will buckle the paper. Again bockingford is a really good paper to work on and there are other papers like cancion and fabriano but I find bockingford is right for me. Cartridge paper can be used but be sure to buy the medium grain variety which is a bit thicker and wont buckle as much as the thinner paper, cartridge paper has a totally different quality about it and can be quite a real challenge. Buy the best watercolour brushes that you can afford and Kolinsky sable brushes are widely accepted to be the best, they hold loads of water so you don't have to keep dipping into the water jar all the time. They come in different sizes and it all depends on how large or how small you want to paint, there are no rules.

If you want to paint on a size paper no larger than A3 (17"x12") then you will probably need a number 10 and a number 6 and 3 brush. These will suffice but there are other brushes like square brushes so you can get into corners and are pretty good for line work. It all depends on what you want to use the brush for, if you want to paint portraits then a square brush is no use but if you are painting buildings or some other squarish looking subject then a square brush might come in handy.

A Rigger
Is used for line work, for example the thin wispy twigs on branches or maybe thin hair strokes, comes in very handy.

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