What are the basic techniques for watercolor painting?
Before you start your first watercolor painting, there are a few techniques you need to master. They are not difficult but they do require some practice, and they are all important for creating a good watercolor painting. The basic techniques are:
- washes
- wet-in-wet
- dry brush
- lifting off
- glazes
Washes
This is the technique you use for covering large areas of the watercolor paper, such as the sky or flat water. First wet the area of paper where you want to apply the wash. Slightly angle your paper to let the paper and paint drain down. Next, mix up the color you want to use for the wash, load the brush with plenty of water and a little of the color, and run the brush horizontally across the paper. Before the paint dries, fill your brush again and paint another stroke across the paper, just overlapping the first stroke. Continue to paint these even strokes until you reach the bottom of the area you want to paint. Leave the painting to dry.
You can experiment with more or less water to get different intensity of color and value, and also change the gradation of the value from dark to light as you move down the painting. As your skills increase, you can use different colors in the strokes to simulate a sunset or the changing color of water as it recedes into the distance.
Wet-in-wet
This is the process of adding color to a wet area of the painting. First you wet the area of the painting with a large brush, then you apply the color. If you have an underlying wash, make sure it is completely dry before you wet any area of it. This creates a blurred image with soft edges.
Dry brush
If you want to have something with a definite edge, or you want to paint thin lines, use the dry brush method. The brush should contain mostly color and not much water, and you drag it over a dry area of the painting. This is the technique to use if you want to create texture in your watercolor painting, such as foliage in landscapes and hair in portraits. Do not paint all your picture with dry brush, but use it in combination with washes to create interesting compositions.
Lifting off
Regardless of whether the watercolor paint is wet or dry, most watercolor paints can be lifted off the watercolor paper so you can paint over with a different color or leave the area the color of the paper. Stains, such as the phthalos are difficult to remove, so stay with non-staining colors until you are more experienced. To lift off the paint, wet the area with pure water then use a tissue to blot away the color.
Glazes
Glazes are similar to washes, except you apply a thin wash of transparent color over an existing wash. You do this to adjust the color or warmth of the underlying color. Cooler glazes make an object recede and warmer glazes bring objects to the foreground. You should use non-staining transparent colors, such as rose madder, which can be applied in layer after layer until you achieve the effect you were aiming for. Always let the glaze wash dry before applying the next layer. Turner used a lot of glazes as you can see in this painting: 
