Ten Tips to Improve Your Watercolor Painting!

Hey friend, I'm so excited about this video. In this video, I'm going to give you 10 tips to instantly improve your watercolor. So if you're like, man, I'm bumming about the results I'm getting, they're not like the teacher, they're not like this image or this YouTube video, apply these 10 tips and I'm sure they will wildly improve your watercolor results. So if you're ready, let's get started. Okay. My first tip is paper. Paper is so important. It's one of the more important of having all good supplies is a really important thing. If you want to see good results, investing in some good, uh, supplies that you love, you're going to see a huge improvement, but paper is one of the number one ways that you can improve your watercolor instantly when it comes to, uh, blending and mixing with wet and wet, uh, the saturation and the density of your colors is going to look oftentimes look really muted and, um, blame honestly, if it's on, uh, sad, cheap, a watercolor paper. So I use legions Stonehenge Aqua cold press paper. It is a hundred percent cotton. It's a really, um, accessible price point for the quality that it is. I used to always use Fabriano or Arche or Arches, however you want to say it. Um, but they're really expensive papers and this is the same quality and much cheaper, um, price point wise, but it is so high quality and good. So you can easily do some color lifting. Your colors are going to look vibrant and rich on this paper. They're not going to be dull or muted looking. And they're also going to blend really well. So a lot of cheaper watercolor papers like Canson watercolor paper, for example, um, they just don't get the richness out of the pigments that you would like to see with the a hundred percent cotton paper here. And then sometimes, um, cheaper papers mix too much like wet and what happens way too quickly or aggressively, um, or the opposite happens. So certain cheap papers will give you the opposite result where the blending with wet and wet is just way too aggressive, um, or some other cheaper papers, the wet and wet ability will be non-existent. And so having a really good paper is going to help you improve your technical skills, but then also give you the better results that you're looking for when you're looking at reference photos, or you're looking at a tutorial online by a professional, et cetera. So if you want a whole video on the supplies I use and why I'm going to link to a video that you can check out on our channel on supplies, but next tip, tip number two for instantly improving your watercolor is those hard lines. So hard lines are, especially if you're painting a loose style floral or floral watercolor or loose style landscape or whatever, um, hard lines are an easy way in some areas. It's totally appropriate, appropriate to have hard lines. Like if you're adding detail to something, um, or you're painting a building and you want to show edges or fine details, et cetera. However, if you want the overall look to look more whimsical, more loose, et cetera, um, try avoiding hard lines as much as you possibly can, because that is something that's going to stand out. It's an edge. It creates a more saturated and more dense area of color. That's just not going to fit with the rest of your piece. And so what will help you with avoiding hard lines is making sure that you're, while you're painting with watercolor, watching how your stuff is drying. If you see something that's creating a hard line, just grab a wet brush, just water on it, do a little, um, you know, how you brush your teeth and you do those circular motions. You can do that on your hard line to lift some of that color off and grab a dry paper towel and lift that off. Or just watch while it's still wet, while your color is still wet, anything that has a puddle, which is going to be my third tip, I'm kind of getting ahead of myself, but anything that has a puddle on your paper is going to have a hard line around that puddle because the water pushes the pigments, uh, the actual granulated pigment to the edge of that puddle. And so it's saturated, saturates, saturates the edge of that puddle, creating a hard line or a ring around that puddle. So my second and third tip go hand in hand with each other. Second tip was avoid hard lines. When you're trying to paint a more whimsical, loose piece, avoid them unless you're obviously adding detail. Third tip is water control. So many newbies, so many beginners struggle with having the appropriate amount of water on their brush all the time. So many of, um, people that I see, you know, learning watercolor grab way too much water with their brush. They're going in their water cup and they're just going straight to their paper with drips of water coming off their brush. Unless you're doing a huge, like, petal or a huge swatch or some sky or something like that, you don't need that much water. And if you do have that much water and you're going to paint an area that's an inch in size on your paper or something like that, it's going to create a puddle, which is going to create hard lines and those weird rings around certain areas, like the tips of your leaf or whatever. It's also going to separate if you're mixing colors together, it's also going to separate some of your colors. So for example, lemon yellow deep is a really dense color. Um, whereas opera rose is much lighter than lemon yellow deep. So if you're mixing lemon yellow deep with opera rose, if you have too much water in your mixture, opera rose is going to lift to the top and you're going to see this like dusty pink stuff on top. So try, it takes balance. It takes a lot of practice, but try to remember to always swipe your water cup off on the edge and it just go off a feel. If something looks like it's literally a puddle on your paper, grab a dry paper towel, soak up that puddle a little bit so it doesn't dry all funky. And then my fourth tip, that was three, right? Yeah. My fourth tip is to have two water cups. I use two water cups for when I'm rinsing off a warm color and when I'm rinsing off my cool colors like greens and blues, et cetera. Um, so that I don't mix contrasting colors together, creating brown muddy water. Some artists use a clean cup of water and a dirty cup of water. However makes sense. Most sense to you is totally up to you, but I highly recommend with watercolor, since you're using water all the time when you're painting that you have those separated, or you have one cup of water that stays clean the whole time and you rinse off all your colors and the other cup of water so that you're never adding brown or muddiness to your pigments when you grab and mix new colors. And then next tip brushes, brushes, brushes. I am a huge fan of Princeton heritage, 40, 50 brushes. You guys know that if you've watched any number of videos on this channel, they're all I use again, check out that supply video. If you want to know why, um, I'm also a huge fan in synthetic brushes because no harm done to animals. And they're also way less expensive. However, Princeton, I have no idea how they, how they did it, how they've done it, but they have created this technology in their brush that literally is the most flexible, snappy absorbent, all the things you want when it comes to watercolor brush. Um, so the heritage 40, 50 brush, I love, they also have an aqua elite brush that holds a lot of water. So you don't have to constantly be dipping and grabbing new water and pigment. Um, but the main goal that I like to achieve in the style watercolor that I paint is flexibility and snappiness. And so I don't want to be working with a flat or a floppy wet mop type of brush. Some water colorists love those brushes when they're working, but me personally, um, I love a snappy flexible brush. So if I'm putting pressure on a brush, it's going to snap right back into its original form, et cetera, because it's so flexible. I like painting that way, but my recommendation or my fifth tip to you is to find a brush that you adore that soaks up and absorbs water and is also going to retain its form. If that's something that lends to your style. So find a good brush. I recommend Princeton round brushes, Princeton series, 40, 50 brushes. Next tip choose or purchase or whatever pigments that inspire you just because an artist you follow loves and recommends certain colors. Doesn't mean that it's going to be your thing. Um, obviously all the colors I recommend are incredibly high quality, but some people like to work with more traditional colors or more muted colors and less vibrant colors. So think about your style. Think about what overall inspires you. I'm assuming since you're watching this video, the colors that I use inspire you, but you never know. Think about what actually inspires you. That's going to make you want to paint more. And so if you're just painting in somebody else's style or referencing somebody else's colors that that inspire them, and they're not really inspiring to you, then it might be some sort of subconscious happening, some subconscious happening. That's not even a phrase. Something subconscious is happening to telling you that you're just not clicking it with it. And you don't really know why it could be the colors that you're working with. So maybe mix up some more muted colors with the colors that you have, or buy more colors that are something more inspiring to you. Overall though, all the supplies I use, you're going to see a huge improvement in your watercolor skills and end result when you're working with high quality supplies. The quality of your supplies makes a huge difference in your results. It's going to make you want to practice more because you're seeing better results than, you know, if you used crappy paper and it wasn't blending properly, or your brush just was hard to work with, or your pigments weren't blending, etc. So working with high quality supplies is first step foundational thing to elevate your watercolor skills and results. So with that out of the way, the next tip I have, tip number six, I think. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven. Tip number seven is to embrace the accidents. So as Bob Ross says, we're all fans of Bob Ross, happy accidents happen, or accidents happen. Man, Bob Ross did it better than me. Embrace those accidents because you never know when they can turn into a happy accident. There you go. So obviously there's a time to call it quits, but there's so much quality to watercolor that lends really well if you're able to be loose and go with the flow and let those colors blend together and see what happens and maybe continue to work with it even though you don't like it for the first little bit, just see how it evolves over time. So embrace those accidents, they can be really, really fun to look at later on, but then also provide a surprise element to your piece that you wouldn't have seen otherwise if you're just being really, really precise and type A about it. Tip number eight, study color theory. When I started taking color theory really seriously in my practice, that's when composition, overall my work just completely transformed and took off and I was able to sit down and paint with more confidence. So a lot of artists and creatives struggle with overthinking and knowing where to place what, when, and color theory informs pretty much every decision that I make on paper. And so if you want more information on color mixing and color theory, make sure you check out our color chart video tutorial that was super informative. That exercise is transformational to how you paint. My ninth tip is to break everything you paint down into shapes. If you've worked through any of my books, Everyday Watercolor and Everyday Watercolor Florals, you know that my background is in sketching and drawing. I used to doodle all the time and I started off with doodling and drawing in journals and in notebooks, etc. And that informs how I paint. And the main reason for that is that everything you paint can be broken down into basic shapes. So a floral can be a sphere, a cone shape, a star shape, etc. A toucan, its head can be a circle mixed with a c-curve and then a straight line. And so there are everything you paint can be broken down into basic shapes. And so if you're able to do that internally in your mind as you're painting, it makes painting so much easier. And so if you haven't checked out my books yet, that is going to help train your mind into breaking these things down into basic shapes for you if you need help with that. But breaking things down, whatever you're painting, landscapes, animals, portraits, florals, whatever it is, can be broken down into basic shapes and make it way easier for you to improve your watercolor skills. And then my final tip is to have dry paper towels on hand while you're painting. This beautiful, you know, or a cloth or a q-tip, something that is dry and like, you know, material, whatever, can soak up some water and pigment. So like I said earlier, if you have puddles of paint and water on your paper, that's going to create hard lines that you might maybe don't want. So using a paper towel to soak it up. And then also color lifting. When you're painting more realistically and you want to add texture or you want to diffuse the color more and make it lighter, use your paper towel and actually create texture on your painting with the texture of your paper towel. Or create lines where you've picked up color lines and petals or details and petals with a q-tip or with a paper towel that's, you know, scrunched up real tight like this. So having a dry paper towel on hand, you should have anyways when you're drying off your brushes and all of that, but just use it. If you've never used it before while you're painting, you might be surprised with the results you can get from lifting color or adding texture to a piece, etc. So those are our 10 tips that I have for you to instantly improve your watercolor. As always, have fun, stay loose, don't judge yourself. Even if it's a mistake and you end up throwing it in the trash or whatever, don't think of it as a mistake. Think of it as a lesson learned and a lesson in improving your skills, improving your muscle memory, etc. But those 10 tips should help you get you on your way to instantly improving your watercolor. I hope you loved this video. Please comment below with your favorite tip that I mentioned in this video or if I didn't mention a tip in this video that you love, I would love to learn from you. So let me know in the comments below what one of your favorite tips for watercolor for instantly improving your watercolor is in the comment section below. I can't wait to read your comments and until next time, I'll see you in the next video.