Recipe For Success in Watercolor

In watercolor, there's actually a recipe for success.

You may have heard me talk about this before in my video that breaks down the different washes of your painting, but today I want to talk a little more specifically about what we're going to do in each one of those washes. We’ll explore how the washes layer together and the effect that it has on the whole of the painting. 

So let's talk about our first wash. First, I like to wet down both sides of my paper and then paint in a way that covers most of my paper in my first wash. What I am trying to accomplish in this first wash is to paint the lightest values of my scene and to set myself up to create a layered scene that brings out the best in watercolor. 

Take a figure - if we’re painting a figure, we have to consider skin tone, the colors of the clothes they are wearing, and their light and shadow side. Consider all of these aspects of your figure, in your first wash. The whole figure may not have the same value and there are parts you’ll want to add and emphasize later in the process.

So when you think of the desired outcome for the second wash, it is to create a large connected shape with our middle value wash. 

Sometimes this means you will be painting around a figure to define that figure more, while preserving the light colors from the first wash that you just painted. Now, as well as preserving those colors, you're also layering colors where there's more strength. 

So if the figure is wearing a green shirt, you paint the light green really light green on the first wash, darker green on the second wash over the figure shirt. This helps you define the figure and add some strength and something more solid to the figure that you're painting. When you have a lighter value and a darker value of those two colors, you're starting to get something really interesting. You're already starting to see a shadow side and a light side of a figure. 

When it comes to the third wash, this is where your darks and your details come in. And so you're thinking about darks and details, and you want to try to connect the dark values of that wash as well. You’ll find that you are seeing the payoff from the first two washes in your last wash when you finally are getting a full sense of light in your scene. 

So let's go back to talking about painting our figure. So you have the light skin tones, you have the light color of a shirt, you have the middle values of the skin and the shirt. And then finally, you have the dark areas. Maybe there are some dark shapes that define the figure and you're painting around other values that you've painted before, but maybe there's also some dark on the figure itself. 

So when you finally have your full range of values: your light values, your middle values and your dark values, you have completed the recipe, and you've layered these values. 

The tendency in the first wash is to want to paint all of your values. But remember all of these separate washes - all of these separate decisions - that add up to make your complete painting. But if you can trust the process and follow the recipe, you'll have a much more engaging, more dynamic, more complete painting.

And before you go, I wanted to mention that if you haven't checked out my free video lesson: How to Avoid Overworking Your Painting, take a look at it! In this lesson, I talk through eight different tips to help you avoid overworking your painting, which was one of my biggest struggles early on. 

Thank you for spending some time with me. I hope that this is helpful to you as you work to create strong, bold watercolor paintings. Keep practicing, keep pushing. Keep moving forward, and I'll see you next time.

-Matt