Guide to Improving Your Watercolor Skills
Learning to paint with watercolors is a journey that involves many steps, and sometimes you may feel like you're stuck. If you have the sense that your technique is no longer improving, it's often a sign that it's time to adopt new strategies. In this article, we'll explain what to work on and how to approach it in order to move to the next level.
Essential technical tips for improving your watercolor skills
Technique is what makes the master. To make progress, you need to perfect certain fundamental skills. Here are the points to which you should pay the most attention, and the way to practice them.
Mastering wet on wet
The amount of water loaded onto the brush determines the effect achieved in the painting. Experiment with different levels of moisture and carefully observe the differences to learn how to consciously apply the right amount of water. The idea is not to control the flow of the color, but to anticipate it in order to be able to use it effectively.
Build up layers of glazes
Building up transparent layers allows you to achieve much more natural and striking color effects. Practice layering from the lightest to the most intense, or from one color to another. Once you have mastered this principle, you will be able to create glazes that are very useful for enriching your pieces in terms of color.
Learn how to mix key colors
A master of color is able to find an infinite number of shades using only a few basic tones. Take the time to combine different variations and identify the resulting color, without relying solely on your palette.
Colin White Kennedy, On the Beach, Henry Scott Tuke
Identify the negative space
Preserving white is a fundamental skill: it is the best way to create light. Instead of adding white at the end, learn to protect it from the beginning and use the unpainted space as a resource in its own right.
Don’t put drawing to one side
Even though watercolor is a painting technique, drawing lines often plays a fundamental role in the process. A good sketch is key to composing a great painting. Continue to do drawing studies in order to create more precise and better-organized sketches.
Upgrade your equipment in order to advance
After practicing for a while, it’s time to invest in higher-quality materials. Here are the essentials to prioritize:
- Paper with a high percentage of cotton.
- Specialized brushes with fine and round tips, with good water retention.
- Scrubber brush or sponge for corrections.
- Ceramic or porcelain palette
- Masking fluid to preserve white areas with precision.
Methods for continuing to improve your watercolor skills
Following regular study techniques will help you to discover new ways of creating and depicting. Here are some particularly effective ones.
Color studies
Take a sketchbook and experiment: try different combinations, gradients, layers, palettes, and color circles. The goal is to understand how colors work together. Note your observations as you go.
Value studies
Mastering light and contrast is essential for creating more visually impactful representations. Therefore, use a single color, not necessarily black, to create still lifes or landscapes.
This exercise also helps you better understand how an image works without relying solely on color. By focusing on contrasts, you will gradually learn to create more realistic compositions and give more depth to your paintings.
Reproduce famous works
Drawing inspiration from the masters is one thing, but studying them in depth to understand how they achieved their results is a practice that truly accelerates progress. Start with J.M.W. Turner or other artists who inspire you.
Venice: the Bridge of Sighs (1904), John Singer Sargent.
Paint outdoors
Portable watercolor sets enable you to paint anywhere. Painting from life will give you a much clearer perspective on composition, proportions, and color.
Undertake training to develop further
Investing your time into taking watercolor classes is an excellent idea to develop your technique and make faster progress. Dessindigo offers watercolor painting classes in video format, designed to guide you step by step in your learning. You will also find many articles and resources to deepen your knowledge and experiment with new techniques.
Improving watercolor painting skills is mainly a matter of consistency and curiosity. Regularly repeating certain exercises enables you to better assess your progress and identify areas that still need work. It is also beneficial to vary subjects and formats in order to continue developing your technique while stimulating your creativity. So keep painting, experimenting, and finding inspiration: the results will eventually follow.