Watercolor Tips - Laying a wash
Now this watercolor tip is on a very basic watercolor technique laying a wash. The purpose of this technique is to give an even “wash”, a layer of diluted watercolor over a majority of your watercolor paper like meadows, the sky or the ocean.T
Now before you start have all your gear ready!, if you stop for any reason while busy laying the wash, you will get hard edges which you will not be able to correct. Make sure you mix the right amount of paint for the whole wash as there will be no time to mix any more after you started. A tip on how to figure out how much paint you will need for the wash, try practising with regular water on a spare piece of paper.
Tilt the top end of the board your paper is resting on up a few degrees to make the diluted paint run towards you. Fill a brush with paint: for a very large area you would need a large brush. Drag the brush carefully along the top edge of the paper, noticing a bead of paint that will build up on the nearest edge. Now reload the brush and repeat the action, overlapping the bead edge of the last brushstroke. Continue down the paper like this until you have covered the area. Clean up the last bead of paint at the bottom with the end of the brush.
There are many variations of the basic wash and it is worth experimenting. Since there are many many variations on how and what with the basic wash it is worth to be a bit experimental. Try graduating a wash by adding more and more clear water as you go down the paper as the sky fades towards the horizon or try to blend colors together gradually or sharply to give it the interesting sky effects clouds, sunsets, mist, water….use your imagination.
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