Watercolor painting is not only interesting but also challenging for it requires great skill and knowledge of the quality of water to understand how water and color form an art.
Mixing color and water may look simple, but it is not; for techniques in watercolor painting are typical only to this medium.
Oil and acrylic paints for instance have the quality of being able to stay exactly where these are applied unlike water which is complex and active that one must have a good understanding of the how water behaves and how to control it. Also, watercolor paints have less hiding capacities that a wrong stroke cannot just be easily covered by another stroke. The paper as well unlike the canvass is too delicate as make mistakes often irreversible.
Though brushes provide the traditional medium to apply the paints, modern experimental paintings have made use of other media such as scrapers, sponges, sprayers, and even sticks.
Most of these media also work in various ways depending on the watercolor technique one uses. Among the common techniques are the glazes, the dry brush, the washes, and the wet and wet. The glaze technique is done by applying a layer of paint or water with the outer layer in a more diluted color to allow the inner layer color to be visible.
In this technique, it is suggested that one makes use of a round brush. With the surface of the paper, one paints, it with the first layer of paint which is highly diluted to loosen up the surface of the paper. When the first layer is dry, a second layer of paint is applied thereby refining the first color and eliminating irregularities and an artist can apply as many as 100 glazes to illuminate colors.
The dry brush technique requires great precision and control which is predominant in most botanical paintings. An undiluted paint is taken up with the use of a small moistened brush.
The paint is then applied to the paper surface by crisscrossing or hatching brushstrokes with the intention to mix the color paints trough a precise touch on the surface. Often, after dry brush watercolors are applied, the surface is varnished to enhance it.
The wash is a technique which makes use of diluted paint wipe out individual strokes and form a unified stroke which is often used in landscape paintings where one has for its background the horizon in blue wash.
In making the wash stroke, make every stroke even and horizontal and each overlaps the stroke above to get excess paints and wick it with a moist brush or a paper towel.
To make graduated from wash strokes, dilute the paint after every stroke to make a dark to light finish. Lastly, there is also the wet and wet technique or the application of paint over a previously painted area.
Among the effects of the applications are the back runs in which the addition of paint in a paint area causes the surrounding areas which are denser with water or paint to creep to it. The salt texture is one where the sprinkled salt tends to produce the impression of snowflake.
There are many more techniques to learn about watercolor painting depending on ones skill and control.
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