Tips and techniques for painting in watercolour....

Ideally, you have an idea in our head as to where the lightest colours are, and the darkest. Leave the white of the paper for the very lightest colours. Start painting in the lighter colours, and covering large areas in a 'wash'.

Watercolour allows for the overpainting of one colour with another, and when the first layer is dry, paint over it. The colour of the second 'wash' is the same, more or less, as if the two colours were mixed in the first place. Carry on painting, and gradually put in darker colours where appropriate.

Note: To make a colour lighter, add more water. Darker, add more of the pigment, or allow to dry and go over the first colour with another layer of the same colour. Note: another approach to make colours darker is to add a little pigment from the other side of the colour wheel. (See later information...)

A common approach for backgrounds and/or the sky, is to make the paper damp before coming in with fairly strong pigment. The paint will run and as well as getting lighter, will be more diffuse. This technique is called wet into wet.

(Painting over dry areas, called 'glazing' is better for more detail.)

You'll be familiar with the colour wheel in the format shown....

There are the 3 primaries of red, blue and yellow, and the colours mixed from them of green, orange and purple.

One thing to get from this is that if you take one colour, say red, and start adding the opposite colour to it, (green), then at first the strength of the original colour is taken away to some extent, so that it isn't so vibrant. More colour means the red starts to get quite dark, and at roughly equal concentrations - a colour very near to black.

But colour mixing can be carried out in a better if we use a colour wheel with 12 sectors, as follows...

(This information has been mostly taken from 'Yellow and Blue don't make Green!' by Michael Wilcox)

Note: when mixing colours in this approach, try to use paints that are as transparent as possible, and definitely don't add goache to the mixture!

Thus of the original 6 colours, each one has been split into two, and the two colours are chosen to be near to neighbouring ones.

To get a 'pure' orange for instance, mix a orangey red with a yellowy orange. Or for a 'pure' purple, (and not brown), mix - ultramarine blue with permanent rose, say, both of which colours are near to the purple end of the spectrum. Or for a 'pure' green, mix a greeny blue with lemon yellow.

Let's think some more about such mixing...

Here's a colour wheel where the primaries have been split into two, and where we are interested in mixing the secondary colours.

Let's look at mixing a purple/violet. We've seen that the purest purples, perhaps for flowers or sunset colours, are made with French ultramarine and permanent rose. What if we mixed a purple from colours that aren't so near to each other, perhaps French ultramarine with a orangy red? Or another blue, less purpley than French Ultramarine, with permanent rose.

These combinations are shown below...

The top mixture is: French ultramarine and permanent rose.

The next one down is: French ultramarine with a orangy red such as cadmium red.

The next one down is: A less purply blue, and permanent rose or crimson.

Let's go on to look at greens...

The top mixture is: A blue with some green in it, and lemon yellow.

The next one down is: A blue with some green in it, and a more orangy yellow, in this example - Aureolin'

The next one down is: French ultramarine with lemon yellow.

Let's go on to look at greens...

So, try not to use semi-opaque colours if possible. Note: cadmium red, orange and yellow fall into this category, but if other colours in the mix are transparent, then it might be OK. French Ultramarine is also said to be semi-opaque. Indian Red is said to be in a class of itself, with a 'house-paint' consistency.

Some colours actually have had white added, such as Naples yellow - so in this approach avoid this colour.

Some colours, e.g. Raw Sienna and Burnt Sienna can be thought of as a mixture of one main colour, and small amounts of others at the other end of the colour wheel. Thus also to be avoided in this approach.

Another 'no-no', in this approach, is to use colours that start off as mixtures - Hooker's Green, Paynes's grey, etc.

But why mix colours if you have that colour in your palette already, e.g. green.....

So, we could generate even more shades of green by starting off with green, say Veridian green, and mixing colours with it.

The following approach is taken from "Making Color Sing" by Jeanne Dobie, AWS.

Start off with Viridian Green. Add a orangey yellow to it such as Aureolin - so as to 'naturalise' the colour, making it less 'artificially' green.

Add different reds to make the colour darker, and to generate different shades.

To make very dark greens, leave out the orangey yellow, and just mix various reds in.

To richer greens start off with Winsor Green, and mix the orangey yellow, followed by various reds as above.

For the darkest greens of all mix Winsor Green with various reds.

(Winsor Green is said to be both transparent and staining, and therefore a very vivid colour).

(Some others in this latter category are: Alizarin Crimson, and Winsor Blue).

The following visual chart is taken from "Making Color Sing" by Jeanne Dobie, AWS.

The top line is where you start off with Viridian Green. Add a orangey yellow to it such as Aureolin - so as to 'naturalise' the colour, making it less 'artificially' green. Then add various reds to make the colour darker - with the darkest mixture to the right.

The bottom line is where you start off with Winsor Green, thought to be even more intense than Viridian. Add a orangey yellow to it such as Aureolin - so as to 'naturalise' the colour, making it less 'artificially' green. Then add various reds to make the colour darker - with the darkest mixture to the right.

The following visual chart is taken from "Making Color Sing" by Jeanne Dobie, AWS.

The top line is where you start off with Viridian Green. Straightaway add various reds to make the colour darker - with the darkest mixture to the right.

The bottom line is where you start off with Winsor Green, thought to be even more intense than Viridian. Straightaway add various reds to make the colour darker - with the darkest mixture to the right.

This is a picture painted by Jeanne Dobie and featured in her book "Making Color Sing" by Jeanne Dobie, AWS.

It just shows what can be done! Reproductions in books are typically made using 3 primary colours and black, and as we've seen - this isn't ideal for showing the exact shade of a colour.

This is a picture painted by Jeanne Dobie and featured in her book "Making Color Sing" by Jeanne Dobie, AWS.

To me the colours are remarkable, and apparently start to do justice to this part of Ireland. (The painting is called 'Erin Drumhills'.

The picture also illustrates another theme in her book - that of surrounding one colour by a grey where the opposites of the original colour predominate, and that colour becomes more intense / 'jewel like' because of that. Thus here, the pink, (with some brown), colour of the cottage is surrounded by the green grey of the landscape, and stands out.

One of the most annoying things about watching a wash dry is to see areas of paint where there is a jagged edge to the paint as it dries.

In the painting shown, certain grey colours made up of such pigments show the effect well.