When I was first learning watercolor, this one technique totally changed the way that my paintings turned out. After playing around with this method, my paintings improved dramatically and I really started to enjoy what I was doing! The whole idea is to understand how watercolor reacts when you are painting on wet paper vs painting on dry paper. It is such a simple concept, but if you keep it in mind your paintings will totally transform! Here are the basics:

Wet on Wet

When your page is wet, any paint you add to that paper will travel, or “bleed,” from the point you touched with your brush and will spread outward from there. You will get a gradient of color from the point you started outward. The more water you have on the page, the farther it will travel. If there is a dry spot on the paper, the color will travel around it. This a good thing to keep in mind if you want to have hard and distinct lines around a feature, like an eye. It is also good to keep this in mind when you are starting to layer you painting. The longer you let the bottom layer dry, the more distinct the second layer will be.

Wet on Dry

When your wet brush touches dry paper, you will get very distinct and “hard” lines at the edges of your stoke. Usually you need more water on your brush for this technique to avoid the dry speckles in the middle of your stroke. These dry speckles can be easily corrected by running a slightly wet, clean brush over the same area. The water in the brush will lift some of the surrounding paint off the paper and blend it all together into a smooth path of color. This technique is best to use near the end of the painting when you are putting in all the details.