Everything you need to start watercolour painting
I wanted to share with you exactly how to begin painting with watercolours! I am completely self taught. Everything I’ve learnt, I’ve found out by scouring the internet for the advice other generous artists have shared and through my own trial and error. What I’ve come up with is a way to begin your watercolour hobby or watercolour painting career in a way that sets you up for success. This is so important with watercolours in particular, because using the wrong paper or cheap paints, can mean your paintings do not work out AT ALL! And it’s not because of your skills, it’s the materials.
So here we go in order of importance:
Watercolour Paper
My favourite brand of watercolour paper is Arches. I specifically use Arches cold pressed 300gsm. This is a good thickness to stop too much warping of the paper and the cold pressed texture holds the colours in a beautiful way. If you prefer smoother texture you will want to buy hot pressed. As a beginner I would steer clear of paper marked ‘rough’.
Other good brands are Fabriano and Saunders Waterford.
Another good tip is to buy the paper in blocks. This is more expensive but the sides are gummed down which means you can paint without needing to stretch the paper or use masking tape to prevent warping. Win win!
Watercolour Paints
The gold standard in watercolour paints are Winsor & Newton, Daniel Smith and Schmincke. You can’t go wrong with these brands and yes even if you are starting out you should use professional grade watercolours. The downside is the cost. What I recommend is starting with a limited colour palette of 6, plus one or two earth tones. This is what I did - and let me tell you it ended up being the key factor in me having a great knowledge today of colour mixing. I put myself through colour mixing school and didn’t even realise it!
Here’s what I started with:
Winsor & Newton
Winsor Lemon
Winsor Yellow
Winsor Blue (green shade)
French Ultramarine
Permanent Rose
Scarlet Lake
and if you can afford two extras get the earth tones -
Raw Sienna
Burnt Umber
Daniel Smith also offers an essential 6 pack that achieves the same results. What you are doing with this mix of colours is having a cool and warm shade in the primary colours to allow you to mix as broad a palette as possible. If you’re interested in more colour mixing tips check out this blog on the offical Daniel Smith website. If you would like to do a colour mixing course my dear friend Yani has started one!
Paint brushes
Now you can get away with the cheaper ones when it comes to brushes but the material of the brush hair is what’s important. For watercolours you want soft brushes - look for ‘sables’ or brushes that specifically say they are for watercolours. Princeton offers a beautiful range of synthetic sables at an affordable price.
If you want to leap in though and buy high end go for it! I bought a set of Escoda brushes 6 years ago - and still use them today!! Excellent value for money. Literally everything I have painted I’ve done with these 3 brushes. The key is to have one or two for finer details and one or two for large washes.
The other consideration is brush shape. The most important for your kit is a round. The tip comes to a fine point allowing lots of detail, but you can also push down on the brush for filling in colour, or leaving broader strokes. I use a size 8 pointed round for EVERYTHING.
Extras
There are a few other essential items to have on hand for watercolour painting thankfully these are easily accessible:
. Paper towel
. Glass jar for water
. Masking tape
and an optional extra
. Masking fluid
This one you don’t need, but it sure can come in handy. Masking fluid is what watercolour artists use to preserve the white of their paper, because in traditional watercolour painting we don’t use white paint at all - any white you see is the paper. To help do this in smaller areas, like for a highlight on a vase or the stamens in a flower, we apply masking fluid to the paper. I’ve just started using this new product from Daniel Smith that comes with detail applicator tips - it’s been amazing so far!
I hope this helps you get started with watercolours! Please feel free to ask any questions in the comments and I will answer as soon as I can.
Remember to pin this to your Pinterest boards to share and save so you can reference later!
Sarah x