Are you a watercolor beginner? In this tutorial, I’ll walk you through a few basic watercolor techniques that are perfect if you’re just starting out. These techniques are the building blocks for every watercolor painting, so it’s important to practice them to grow your skills and get comfortable with your watercolor supplies.
This post is geared towards beginners, but if you’re an experienced artist, you’re welcome to follow along for a technique refresher!
Here’s what we’ll be covering. Click to jump to any of these sections!
Quick Note: While this blog dives into the world of techniques and drills you can do to improve, some students love to have video lessons as a learning aid.
If you feel intimidated by the painting process or you aren’t sure where to start, I’d love for you to join me in my Foundations of Watercolor class.
This class is for complete beginners and it will feel like I’m holding your hand and gently guiding you through learning watercolor starting with the basics. You’ll learn how to use your supplies, how to avoid common mistakes, and how to get past the fear of the blank page. By the end of this class, you’ll be confident about basic techniques and watercolor supplies!
Watercolor Supplies
My watercolor supply philosophy is simple: less is more! One of the traps I see beginners fall into is thinking you need a ton of different supplies. In fact, you just need a few simple things to get started. Did you know I started my own painting journey with a used set of student paints and a couple old brushes? It’s true! The most important thing is to just get started, and you can always upgrade as you continue to paint.
As you progress, you will want to make sure you’re painting with the highest quality supplies you can afford. I believe that watercolor paper is the most important supply to upgrade, even if you’re just getting started. Why? Because we are painting with water, and we need special paper for that.
Student quality paper simply will not work the same way, and so if you are trying to learn watercolor techniques on paper that doesn’t work well, you will get frustrated with your results. A lot of students think they need to practice on student quality paper before they “deserve” higher-quality paper, but the truth is that if you learn how to paint on cheap paper, you will have to re-learn how to paint on high-quality paper. In this case, it is best to start as you mean to go on.
Other than paper, you’ll want to have some watercolor paints and at least one brush. You can find a clickable list of my recommended supplies here. Before jumping into the techniques and exercises below, make sure you also have a jar or two of clean water and some paper towels on hand. To follow along with these exercises, you’ll need a set of watercolor paints, watercolor paper, a brush, a jar of water, and a paper towel.
Now, let’s dive into the top watercolor techniques for beginners!
Watercolor Technique #1: Flat Wash
The flat wash is the most basic watercolor technique and it’s important to practice it until you feel confident. It will help you get comfortable with your supplies, which is so important. The thing to remember about a simple flat wash is that you want it to be the same color from top to bottom when you paint it.
To create a flat wash, load your brush with pigment and slowly swish it back and forth on the paper. You can make any shape, but in the example below, I painted it as a rectangle. It’s important to get a nice even stroke with this technique so that the wash is the same color from top to bottom, without any gradient change or variation.
Common Mistakes:
If you’re coming to watercolors from the beautiful world of acrylics or oils, you’re used to blending and moving the paint a lot with the brush. Watercolor dries super fast, so you want to practice putting your brushstrokes down and then picking up your brush and leaving your swatches alone. Otherwise, you’ll find your end result gets hard edges and streaks in it. I know this can be tough, but paint your swatch and then pick up your brush and move on to the next thing.
Don’t float your hand above the paper. Keep your hand anchored to the table. See my pinky in the clip below? It’s staying connected to the table to give my hand more stability and control as I paint.
Use the entire belly of the brush, not just the tip, to get wide beautiful brushstrokes.
If you have too much water on your brush, you may see parts of the wash pooling in darker areas. You can fix this by grabbing a clean dry brush and gently dabbing it to the areas where there is pooling. Then you can take a damp brush and smooth it out.
The Flat Wash Technique in Practice
Flat washes are typically used as a foundational layer before adding additional layers and incorporating more advanced techniques. Read on to learn about the more complex techniques that will take your paintings from flat to 3D!
Watercolor Technique #2: Wet into Wet
The wet into wet watercolor technique is where you add pigment to an area on your paper that is already wet. The cool part about this technique is that the pigment won’t spread anywhere outside the boundaries of the wet area you’ve painted. For example, I painted the letter “a” with plain water on my paper, and dropped pink paint into that wet area. Instead of blooming across the page, it stays within the borders of the water I initially painted!
You can practice this technique with a clear water wash or by adding a different color on top of a flat wash of paint while it’s still wet. It’s fun to explore and see how the paint blooms and flows. In my example, I played with adding little polka dots and mixing colors together on a leaf!
The wet into wet technique is one of the hardest techniques to master, so if you find it challenging, you’re not alone!
Here are some key points to remember:
Your initial wash of water on the paper should glisten and shine, but it should not form a bubble of water on the paper. If you were to pick up the paper and the water dripped down it, that’s a great way to know you have too much water on the paper. Practice getting an even sheen of water on your paper before dropping color in.
Are you picking up too much water on your brush? Make sure you drag the brush across the rim of your jar of water when you pull your brush out and it’ll help you to have a damp brush instead of one that is dripping with water.
The Wet Into Wet Technique in Practice
In botanical painting, we use the wet into wet technique to create seamless color blends on petals and leaves to indicate different areas of shadow and light. In this succulent painting, you’ll notice different shades of green and yellow on each leaf. This is achieved with the wet into wet method!
Wet into wet is also used when creating blurry, blended backgrounds like in this Fuchsia painting.
Wet into wet is one of the most fun and versatile techniques you’ll learn. It takes practice and, importantly, the ability to adapt as you paint in order to master it. Be patient with yourself and remember that the goal is to learn something each time you paint, not to be perfect.
Watercolor Technique #3: Wet on Dry
Wet on dry is (you guessed it…) the process of putting wet paint onto dry paint or dry paper to create detail, add depth, and create crisp marks that don’t blend or bleed. When you’re painting on a surface that's completely dry, you have total control since the paint won’t flow like it does with the wet into wet method. Painting a flat wash like we did earlier is an example of wet on dry painting, however, there are lots of other ways you can use this technique.
Adding Details
I love to use the wet on dry method to add crisp details to paintings. Often, those details will be the final layer of your painting. You can either paint these directly onto the paper or on top of a section of dry paint. In the sunflower example below, I used the wet on dry technique to add detail to the center of the flower with small dots painted on top of a dry flat wash of brown paint.
Practice this method on your own by painting details on top of a swatch of dried paint. Take note of how glazing with a second layer of paint makes the first one look and how clean and fine you can get your details.
Make sure your surface is 100% dry, or your paint will bleed like it does with the wet into wet method.
Watercolor Technique #4: Lifting
You can’t really erase watercolor, but you can lift up some of the paint. While you won’t be able to get back to the pure white of the paper, it’s possible to lift paint when wet or dry with some specific techniques.
It’s a bit easier to lift paint while it’s still wet. You can use a paper towel or a dry brush to lift wet paint off the page, and this will usually give you a softer edge than lifting when the paint has already dried.
To practice, start by painting a flat wash in any color you like. Now, wash your brush off and dry it on your paper towel. You can also use a different completely dry brush for this. Take the dry brush and pull it through the wet paint in the area you want to lift.
If you’re using a paper towel, I find it’s better if it is slightly damp. Paper towels are great at giving your paint a matte look or some extra texture. This is a great technique if you’re painting a sky. You can go in with a light blue wash and pick up certain areas by dabbing a paper towel to give the appearance of fluffy clouds in the sky!
If you’ve made a mistake and want to remove as much of the color as possible, you can take a dry paper towel and press it firmly to the whole area and lift. This doesn’t always erase the entire wet section, but it can be helpful in a pinch!
If you’re lifting paint after it has dried, you’ll want to use a wet brush or a piece of paper towel and gently but firmly lift the paint, stopping frequently to clean the paint off your brush before going back in. If you look at the Fuchsia painting example, you can see that all the small circles in the background were created by lifting dried paint off the paper with a stiff brush, clean water, and a paper towel.
Watercolor Technique #5: Blending and Mixing Colors on Paper
Now let’s talk about blending colors together on the paper. Sometimes you’ll want to create a seamless blended effect in your paintings to make them more lifelike. For example, in this plumeria painting, the petals transition from yellow to pink.
Here are a couple different ways that you can practice blending your colors on the paper.
Wet on Dry
The first way to do this is to use the wet on dry method. Mix up two different colors of paint on your palette and draw out an area where you want to practice blending them. I’m using a small square in my example.
Paint one of the colors with a flat wash about halfway through your paint area. Then clean your brush and paint the second color on the other side. When the two colors meet in the middle, you can use light strokes back and forth to gently blend them together. Be sure not to overwork the blending. This can cause the paint to get streaky after a while.
Wet on Wet
Now, let’s try doing this with the wet into wet method! This is the method I’d recommend because it’ll create softer lines and stay workable a bit longer.
Start by painting a square with just water. Then take one of your paint colors and swipe it across the top. You’ll already start to see the water helping to move the paint with just that initial brush stroke!
Next, take your second color and swipe it along the bottom section. Now you can gently start to blend the two sections together with your brush. I like to paint little circles with my brush with light pressure to mix the paints together.
Note: This video is sped up! You don’t want to do your blending this fast in real life 😊
Explore these different methods for blending to see which one you like best! There’s no wrong way to do it!
Watercolor Technique #6: Basic Brushstroke Techniques
When it comes to watercolor brushes, the most versatile is a medium size round brush. I love this size 6 round brush from Princeton! The beauty of a great round brush is that you can make so many marks with it. When you use light pressure you can get thin, fine details. When you use heavy pressure, the brush fans out and covers a large surface area. Here are three different brushstrokes to practice to instantly level-up your watercolor skills!
Thin lines
The first thing I recommend is that you practice making the narrowest line you can. This is a great exercise to help you get used to the fine motor skills of watercolor painting and this is one of the few times it’s okay to practice on cheap watercolor paper!
To practice this, you want to use the lightest pressure you can with your brush to get the thinnest line possible. Start by loading your brush with paint, hold your brush at a 45 degree angle, and drag it down the page with thin pressure. Make sure to anchor your hand to the table so it’s not floating in space and move your entire arm as you paint. This will give you much more control as you practice these thin lines.
This takes patience because it can be challenging to get a consistent line weight all the way down. But with enough practice, you’ll start to get the hang of it!
Thick lines
Now, let’s practice making the thickest line possible! To do that, place your brush on the paper and jiggle it all the way down so that it fans out. Then drag it down the page. This will show you how thick of a line you can make with that brush. For these brushstrokes, you’ll need a lot of paint on the brush so make sure to load it up before you start!
Lines with varied pressure
Now that you’ve practiced the thin and thick strokes, it’s time to combine them! Practice going from light pressure, to the heaviest pressure, back to light pressure with your brush. This makes a cool leaf shape which is great for botanical painting!
Make sure to take this slowly and methodically so you don’t end up with puddles in the middle or edge of the leaf. Also make sure to keep your brush moving the entire time so that you don’t end up with any jagged edges.
Lots of my students report that they get blobs of color in the middle or at the tips of this brushstroke when they’re practicing. If you’re using inexpensive paper, you’ll find it hard to avoid those blobs because the paper dries too quickly. You also want to make sure you’re taking your time because speed is not the goal here.
This can take some getting used to, but it’s such a fun and relaxing painting drill. You can fill up pages of these practice leaves and even combine them together to make bigger leaf shapes! It’s a great way to practice brush control and boost your fine motor skills for painting.
Watercolor Technique #7: Glazing
Glazing is a watercolor technique where you layer colors on top of each other to create more depth. When we’re using beautiful, transparent watercolors, this also creates the glowing effect that is so unique to watercolor. In botanical watercolor painting, we do a lot of glazing to create realistic shadows and detail. For example, when I paint a layer on top of this sunflower petal it gets darker at the center and adds depth.
In the example below, I’m using the wet into wet technique by carefully painting one petal at a time with water and then dropping color into the wet area.
In watercolor, we always work light to dark since watercolor is a transparent medium and we can't put lighter colors on top of existing dark layers. With this in mind, you always want to start with a light wash and gradually glaze it to reach your desired level of darkness and shadow.
What do you think about the essential watercolor techniques? While I use them for floral watercolors, these techniques are useful regardless of what you’re painting.
The key to getting comfortable with watercolor is to keep putting your brush to paper and experimenting.
If you’re ever stuck wondering what to paint, come back to these techniques and spend some time practicing! Remember, you don’t have to make a masterpiece every time you paint. Even simple technique exercises like these will help you relax and enjoy the magic of watercolor!
Happy painting,
Alex
Resources for Beginners
Can’t get enough of your new watercolor practice? Here are some more resources to guide you along your watercolor journey!
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The Ultimate Watercolor Starter’s Guide
The companion to this blog post – Check out my free watercolor ebook that’s filled to the brim with everything you need to know to get started with watercolor.
Build a strong foundation in watercolor through seven engaging video lessons that cover everything from supply selection to essential techniques. Perfect for complete beginners, this course includes a valuable bonus Q&A session that addresses real student questions and common challenges.
Learn to understand watercolor from the ground up through 12 bite-sized lessons that build your skills systematically while creating a beautiful technique sampler. Perfect for absolute beginners, this course takes you from basic brush handling to beautiful color blends, giving you both the skills and a handy reference guide for your continued painting journey.
