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Start Art 5 22 RT START www.painters-online.co.uk more water for longer periods of time. A good intermediate weight is 300gsm (140lb). An affordable, reliable paper is St. Cuthbert’s Paper Mill Bockingford. Brushes As with watercolour paint, the range of brushes available to purchase is bewildering, even though It is perfectly possible to paint most watercolours with just one brush! A round synthetic size 16 brush is a very flexible tool for producing most watercolour paintings. The size takes some getting used to, but once you do, it will help you produce lively, fluid watercolours. An additional round size 8 is also very handy for fine detail and applying small areas of intense colour. Palette Palettes come in all shapes and sizes, choose one that comes with large divided mixing areas and try to avoid squirting pigment into every available paint well. Laying a flat wash onto dry paper is the most basic of exercises but the skill required in doing it lies behind the success of most watercolour paintings. Tilt your paper and draw a rectangle approximately 7 8in. (18 20cm). Although this does not look like a large area, it will often require more paint than you think you will need. Taking your size 16 brush, squeeze out a generous amount of paint – the excess will live quite happily in your palette for weeks. Start to dilute your paint with water. In a saucer you would expect it to be about one third full to cover such an area. Try not to add too much water, this takes a bit of practise, but you’re looking for the consistency of a cup of cocoa. If you tilt the palette and the paint stays put, it’s too strong. Dip the brush into the paint and look at it. The tip should be totally saturated and hanging down slightly under the weight of the paint. Apply an even stroke across the paper. Stop and look. Is the paint accumulating and forming a bead? If it is, congratulations! Carry on applying Other useful items ● I like to have a flat board onto which I can either stretch or tape my paper – 6mm thick MDF is a good surface, cut slightly larger than the paper size ● A large water container, the bigger the better ● A sharp 3B pencil ● A kneadable putty rubber – this won’t damage the surface of your paper if you have to make a correction ● Kitchen towel PRACTISE YOUR WATERCOLOUR TECHNIQUES subsequent strokes and watch the bead flow down into the next stroke. See Figure 2. If there is no bead, there is probably insufficient paint in the brush or the angle of the paper is too shallow. Upon reaching the bottom, dry the brush and touch it onto the accumulated paint at the base of the paper to suck the remaining paint from the surface. If your dried surface looks stripey, the brush is being pressed on too hard, or the paint mix is too strong. Light strokes and medium mixes are the order of the day. Try again, but this time leave the accumulated paint and see what happens. As the paint dries, a backrun or ‘cauliflower’ will appear. This is when wet paint meets drying paint, causing a reaction. This can be annoying if you don’t want it to happen, useful if you know how to create one. Look at the one you’ve just created, does it look like distant trees? Grasses? Clouds? The possibilities are endless. See Figure 3 There are a number of variations of this exercise that will give a good insight into more watercolour techniques. Figure 3 When wet paint meets dry paint you can get a ‘backrun’ effect like a ‘cauliflower’, which can by annoying if you don’t want this in your painting, but useful if you know how to control it as it can suggest clouds in a sky, for example. The possibilities are endless… Figure 2 Practise laying a simple flat wash of watercolour by loading your brush with diluted paint and applying an even stroke across your paper. Mastering the basic techniques such as this one is the key to successful watercolour painting ▼