I’ve had a box of watercolors sitting in my studio storage cabinet now for over a year. I kept promising myself I would try them out at some point. Welp, I finally blocked out some time and opened the box! I wanted to share with you all the approach I took and some of the challenges that I encountered.
My hope is that this article might help someone learn something new, or what NOT to do do when you try out watercolors for the first time. I ended up using this watercolor as a study for a new painting I made.
You can view the final watercolor piece by scrolling all the way to the bottom of this article, and you can view the final painting I created from this watercolor on my Instagram @chosenbyart.
Research
I remembered some of the things that old friends from college shared with me when using watercolor, but I wanted to do some research to refresh my memory.
This video by James Gurney has some great info on how to start off with a local color, how to use white highlights, and re-wet the painting in order to rework some areas.
Rough Sketch
I didn’t know if I would be able to sketch with watercolor paint like I can with acrylic or oil paint (usually in a neutral color like ochre), and I didn’t have a water color pencil on hand so I decided to use graphite pencil.
I prayed to the watercolor gods that my rough sketch wouldn’t be too dark to cover with watercolor paint since it’s so transparent.
I always drop in a sketch like this for acrylic paintings so this felt very familiar.
So far, off to a good start.
Prepping The Paper
I decided to work on toned sketch paper for this. I know, I know, I should’ve tried it on watercolor paper, but I figured I was just testing it out so it really didn’t matter too much.
I knew that I would have to wet the paper and then stretch it somehow so the paper wouldn’t curl up. I used an old piece of Tupperware filled with cool water to run the paper back and forth in it to get it primed.
I then immediately taped it down on a piece of Masonite that I had lying around in the studio, making sure the paper was super taught by starting from one corner to the next, smoothing out any air pockets or wrinkles along the way.
Underpainting
I started creating the underpainting just like I normally would with an acrylic painting. And this, folks, is were I think things went off the rails.
Once the first layer was on the paper I waited. From what I learned this was a crucial step that most beginners failed at, it is really important to let the first layer completely dry, so the paint colors don’t become muddy when adding new layers, and the saturation of your colors are prominent.
The only thing is, I had no idea that when approaching watercolor you should always keep the location of your highlights/light source in mind. Unlike acrylic paint, it was really hard for me to come back and lay any kind of highlight overtop layers since a new layer can re-activate the layers below. This has the potential to mix highlights with other colors that you didn’t intend on mixing.
Layering
I made sure to let each layer dry completely before I started a new one. I would then use a large brush to cover the the entire work in a thin layer of water before starting a new layer.
Another little quirk I found out was that by adding white to any color it would become extremely opaque, similar to gouache paint. It was also hard to create dark, heavy tones. When the paint dries it seems a lot lighter in color than when it’s wet.
I decided to add a some detail work with colored pencils and it seemed to really bring this little piece to life, and actually saved the piece, in my opinion.
So What Did I Think?
Watercolor proved to be harder than I had expected! I think the most difficult part for me was trying to figure out how colors react with one another and layering.
The other challenge I found was how to get highlights to pronounce themselves. I think with watercolor you always have to be conscious as to where these highlights will exist within the composition of the piece.
All that being said, like anything I think the more I create with watercolor the better I can become. So I will definitely keep trying this out.
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