5 Keys to Learning Watercolor Faster

I've been painting about ten years, and I have made quite a bit of progress since I first decided to pick up a paintbrush.

As I look back on my learning, there are five things that I would have done differently. And I'm going to share those things with you today because I believe this will help you learn watercolor, even faster.

I Wish I'd Known These Five Things When I Started

1. Paint Smaller.

For some reason, when I first started, I had this idea that I needed to paint the same size paintings of the artists I was following and learning from. But the truth was, that even a quarter sheet (at 11x15 inches) was a little bit big when I was first starting out.

By painting smaller and more often, you gain a much faster understanding of watercolor timing, brushwork, perspective, and drawing. All of these things, on a smaller scale, are a bit easier to grasp. Especially beneficial is how it can help you with timing. It's much easier to complete a wash on a small piece of paper without things drying out. The better you manage your timing, the more attention you can give other skills.

Also, if you're painting a smaller size, this is less of a time commitment. If you have a limited amount of time to work on painting, keeping things small is a great way to still work on specific skills and see progression.

So, by painting small and painting more often, you will learn things quicker and get a better feel for working in the medium.

2. Practice Specific Skills.

A lot of people - including myself when I first was learning - think that to practice painting they have to work on completing complete paintings, from start to finish. They think that painting a fully rendered scene, time and again, is the best way to learn.

But to learn more quickly, I recommend that you instead practice specific skills that you want to get better at. If you want to improve in color mixing, do some color studies. If you want to draw better, take time to focus in on your drawing. If you want to paint more realistic figures, do a page or two of figures in different poses.

If you're not sure what specific skills to focus on, take a look at your completed painting and identify what would improve these scenes. Then set aside time to practice, just working on those specific aspects of the painting that you are struggling with. Also, check out my intuitive practice series on YouTube that gives you advice on improving isolated watercolor skills.

This hard work will show up when you take on a full scene, trust me.

3. Spend More Time Playing.

What I mean by this is play around with the medium. Work on your brush strokes. Practice mark making. Draw in your sketchbook.

Disconnect from the outcome and just enjoy yourself. 

Doing this allows you to become more comfortable with your supplies - your pencil, your brushes, your paper - with no real pressure on the result.

I can see clearly now that introducing more play and lightheartedness into my studying early on would have helped me take larger steps forward.

4. Use Quality Supplies From the Beginning.

It's always difficult when you start something new. You don't want to necessarily invest in the best supplies, not knowing how much you're going enjoy the new hobby. 

But there are some supplies in watercolor that just really, really make a big difference. 

So, here's my advice: invest in good paper and good paint, but don't stress too much about brushes.

If you are only painting on cheap paper that has wood pulp in it, that isn't 100% cotton, it's really hard to work with.

The way the paper absorbs the pigment and how long the paper stays wet really changes your process. I use Saunders Waterford Cold Press 140 lb. paper, which isn't cheap. To save some money, maybe don't use it for your value studies or certain practices. Also you can take the full sheets and cut them down into smaller pieces of paper to make it last longer. 

The other supplies I think matters a lot are your paints. I recommend using tube paints over pan paints. With tube paints, you can get a much richer mixture of paint. If you think about that early on, it will make a difference when you get into working with values. If you want to paint scenes with vibrant light, you need to be able to paint the strong middle values and the darks. This is much easier to do if you're working with tube paints rather than pans of paint.

5. Paint More Scenes in One Color.

You probably hear me harp on this all the time, but learning and understanding values is the lesson that made the biggest difference in my paintings.

When we take away color and we work with only one color, we can think more about tone than color mixing.

Sometimes color mixing gets in the way when we're learning, even though it's the thing most artists want to work on right away. But value and tone will make a much bigger impact on your work. 

Values are so important, in fact, that I made it the main module of my Watercolor Essentials course.

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