Painting in Watercolor 4: Techniques & Tricks
If you give me some paint and a brush, I can make something out of it. But, I am by no means an expert. I've put the following lesson together after pouring through videos by great artists like James Gurney, Matthew White, Karen Rice, and Jane Blundell. More than any other medium I've seen, the world of watercolor is full of tricks and techniques, some quite beautiful, and some just plain crazy and absurd. Many of them I've never tried. I'm quite simple minded, and so I like to just take a simple, basic brush and colors and push them to the limit, without experimenting with any of the neat little tricks that other artists use. I basically treat watercolors like they're any other paint, I'm embarrassed to admit. I think it's worth stating that you can do this as well, and make beautiful art. But as a teacher, I feel you deserve to know more. As I go over the techniques these masters use, I intend to start using them in my own work. When I do, I'll add more examples to these lessons (and cut out this embarrassing intro). So, on to the lesson.
Painting Wet on Dry
This is the most straight-forward, simple way of painting in watercolor. Your brush is wet with paint, and the paper is not. The paint goes exactly where you put it, and, so long as you keep your areas separate, paint only goes where you want it to. It tends to dry with hard, sharp edges.
Painting Wet on Wet
This is when you first wet the paper (either all of it or just a part) and then add dabs and drops of paint into it. The water spreads out for softer washes of color. You can control how much water is on the paper, but it's best not to let it form into large puddles. Those are harder to control and take hours to dry. There are some artists who distinguish between a very wet paper and one that is merely "damp". The amount of water on the page determines just how much your color spreads and softens. You can and should practice painting on different amounts of wet paper.
It's worth knowing a couple things about wet-on-wet painting. First, you can tilt the paper, in all kinds of directions to move the paint around, making it run in different directions. Second, you can gently go over lines and areas that are still damp and soften them with a brush. Third you can take a clean piece of paper towel and draw into your shapes, pulling out water and color, erasing where needed and making shapes like clouds. And, another neat little trick - if you don't like your first layer of colors, say they got too muddy or whatever - so long as it's still wet, you can run it under a sink and completely wash it out! And then try again (note, certain colors are more likely to stain the paper).
Dry Brush
The idea here is to mix the color you want on your palette, and then dab your brush on a rag so it only has a tiny amount of paint on it. Then when you paint, you get dry, broken lines, that can suggest all sorts of different textures. Winslow Homer used a dry brush to paint several of the waves and scales in this picture:
John Singer Sargent used a very dry brush to get some of the little dotted waves in this sketch of a boat (look above the boat):
Even better, look at this work by Sargent:
This is where watercolor really shines. With these alligators, he uses a dry brush to make the alligators feel dry, baking under a hot sun, while his wet strokes of the water feel wet. This contrasting approach to brush strokes makes such an impact.
You can even part the bristles a bit for a "split-brush" technique, so that the marks are even wilder and scruffier. In the following video James Gurney uses casein paint instead of watercolor, but you get the idea
Glazing
With watercolor you can paint in layers. It's a slow process, but the effects can be stunning. You have to wait for the first layer to completely, fully dry. It should feel dry to the touch, and should not feel cool either. If you are impatient, and paint over a damp layer, it can ruin and muddy your work. If, on the other hand, you wait till the first layer is completely dry, and you lightly brush water on top, it shouldn't reactivate the underpainting. Instead you can lightly add more colors to glaze over the surface. If you need to wipe away excess water, just tilt the work to one side, so it trickles to the edge, and lightly dab it that way, so you don't accidentally ruin your artwork.
Back Runs (Cauliflowers, Blooms)
So, these can be a mistake if it's not what you want. But, in the right places, back runs can create amazing textural effects, great for grasses, flowers, and greenery. Back runs occur when you paint very wet over a damp paper. As they dry, the paint gets drawn out of the paper and pulled into little veins and rivulets, with a sharp edge around it, almost like a diagram of a microscopic cell. Back runs can be beautiful when they're intentional.
Prep Drawing in Ink
You can draw your picture first using ink, before painting. If you use non-water soluble inks, you don't have to worry about your colors reactivating the ink and mixing with it. If you use water soluble inks, it's an issue, but if you let it dry completely, you may be able to paint in light washes over it? Maybe? Depending on the ink? This is one of those things you don't know until you try it. Or avoid the issue by using non-water-soluble inks.
Painting Vertically
Most watercolorists work at a flat table, to prevent the water from running. But you don't have to. Mary Whyte says:
“Most of my students are surprised that I work upright, almost completely vertical, rather than working flat. Working vertical allows me to work large–when working flat, you can only work as large as your arm can reach–and gives me more control over my washes. It also allows me to step back and look at my work from a distance.”
Nathan Fowkes also paints vertically sometimes, as seen in this series of process shots:
Underpainting
Underpainting is a great way to help your colors glow. With opaque paints like acrylic, oil, and gouache, you usually paint light colors over a dark underpainting. With watercolors it's the opposite, starting light, and building up darker and darker. Nathan Fowkes's Jerusalem above is also a good example of underpainting.
Mixing with Gouache
Gouaches is an opaque watercolor. It mixes well with watercolor, you just lose translucency. Artists like Sargent and James Gurney often start with transparent colors, and then work certain opaque colors over, later in the process.
Masking Fluid
You can paint various shapes with masking fluid so that, when the rest of your painting is dry, you can peel back the masking fluid to reveal the bright white shapes. You can also use rubber cement for this, but it's not as easy or accurate to work with. Plus, it's toxic. Beware that with masking fluid, you have to let it dry naturally. Do not use a blow drier on it, or it's very hard to peel off later. I'm putting an example by Winslow Homer here. I don't really know if he used masking fluid, but it seems to me the easiest way to create the effect of the fishing line:
Sgraffito
You can draw and scratch lines into the paper with a toothpick or needle, or the back of your brush. With a needle the paint will fill these crevices, saturating them darker than the surrounding areas. With the back of your brush, you can scratch out lighter lines. It depends on the paper you use and how it's prepped.
Optical Mixing
As with all painting medium, you can paint tiny dots of different colors next to each other, so that when you stand far enough away they appear to mix together. This is especially nice in watercolor because of their translucency. The picture I painted in the intro of this lesson is a nice example of optical mixing.
Adding Salt
You can sprinkle bits of salt onto wet or damp areas of your painting and the crystals will suck up the color and create a texture similar to snow, or a field of wildflowers.
Adding Rubbing Alcohol
If you add drops of alcohol onto damp watercolor, it seems to repel or dissolve the colors. You could do this for various textural effects, spritzing it or dripping over the work. I've seen this recommended, but I'm not sure I'd recommend it myself. I'm not sure what the alcohol does to the pigments long-term. In general it's not an artist's tool, and so I worry about using it as such. I like the artwork I make to be archival. Having said that, I don't really know so it's something to look up.
Spritzing and Splattering Colors
You can spritz paint onto your picture with a finger, or simply flick the brush around to get little bits of splatter and droplets on your painting. This is typically done with white paint for snowy effects, but you can do all sorts of things with this - think of wheels spinning through mud, waves crashing together, someone running in the rain, etc.
Blowing Through a Straw
If you put down a drop of concentrated color, you can blow on it with a straw to make funny little lines, good for certain trees and branches. I'm not sure why you'd do this, as opposed to just using a brush, but hey, if you want to give it a try, why not?
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