Hello, and welcome to the first installment of The Great Tutorial Adventure. In this News feature, I'll be featuring tutorials and writing some info about watercolour painting.

There are a boatload of ways to approach watercolour painting; it's one of the most popular traditional media out there, and it lends itself well to mixed-media techniques. Some artists claim that watercolours are difficult to learn, and there is some truth to that, but mainly it's about experience and knowing what you want to do with your colours more than anything else.

Speaking of colours, it's important to know what your colours will do when mixed together or used separately. *leftyfro has a wonderful tutorial on the subject.



You don't need to have dozens and dozens of colours to make a functional watercolour palette. In fact, many professional watercolourists choose to use only three colours (cyan, magenta, and yellow). Unlike acrylics and oils, you don't need white to tint colours; you can just add water and the white of the paper will tint the colour for you.

Brush and paper quality is important when painting in watercolours; if your paper is poor, then your colours may not be able to set onto the paper or lift from it properly. Poor-quality brushes may be difficult to control, and even worse, they may leave loose hairs or bristles on the painting! Different artists have their favourites, so try out different brands to see which one works best for what you want to do.

As for methods, there are too many to list, but generally the two basic types of painting are wet into wet and wet on dry. Some artists like to use one method exclusively, while others use them both together.

So without further techno-blabber from me, here are some great informative tutorials:

MATERIALS


TECHNIQUES


WALKTHROUGHS


Be on the lookout for more Great Tutorial Adventure articles!
Happy Painting!