Watercolor Wash Techniques for Beginners

1. Introduction: I painted in woodcolur for quite a long time before I discovered that washes are actually a thing. Washes are very, very cool, really fun to make and really important as a fundamental skill. So in this class, we're going to look at three types of washes, how to make them, and then we're going to use the wash in a little painting of a sky and at Sbrds. I'm Catan Jennifer. I'm an artist and in person woodcolur instructor and a top teacher on Skillshare. This is a quick, fundamental washers class for beginners, so I hope you will join me. It 2. Project: Project for the class is to paint the three different types of washers. It's up to you whether you do it on dry paper or wet paper or both. And then once you've done that, have a go at putting the wash into practice by painting a variegated wash sky and then adding some birds. When you finish your project, please upload it to the class Project Gallery so that I can see what you've done and offer you some personal feedback. 3. Materials: Materials you will need are your standard watercolor paints, a nice big fat quill mop brush that holds a lot of paint and some good quality watercolor paper. And then you'll also need a board and some tape to tape your paper down. So gather those things now and we will get started. 4. Preparing Your Wash: The first thing to know about washes is how to mix up a wash. You need a small container. The best kind of container would be a ceramic dish that you can get from a Chinese supermarket, but I don't have one of those, so I'm using this little plastic tub. And what I've done is I've put my little bit of paint on the side of my dish there. And then I'm going to put a small amount of water in my dish, and I'm going to draw the paint from the side into the wash. You don't want to just dump a whole load of water into your tub and mix it all together, because if you do that, you can't control the strength of the wash. Sometimes you're going to want a wash that's very strongly pigmented, and other times, you're going to want a much more dilute wash. So this is a way of controlling the strength of your wash. It's really important when you mix up a wash that you mix up enough paint for the entire wash. You don't want to run out of paint as you are creating your wash. So I've added a bit more water there, and I'm mixing it all together. You want to make sure that there are no lumps of more intense pigment in your wash. This is a beautiful thalo blue, green shade, which is a cool blue, and it makes for a really stunning, transparent flat wash. It's a good idea to test your wash before you go onto your actual painting. You can do this on a palette like this, have a look and see how strong it is or on a little bit of paper. So here's a bit of test paper. That's a beautiful strength of wash. I might just add a little bit more water. 5. Flat Wash: Now we're going to look at the three types of washers, a flat wash, a graded wash, and a variegated wash. You can do all three types of washes on either wet paper or on dry paper. The method you choose will depend on what kind of painting you're making. There's pros and cons to either method, and you'll probably discover which one you prefer by having a go. For a flat wash, I have found that working wet on dry gives me the best control over my wash. So I'm going to do a flat wash over here. I've got my board on about a 15 degree slope. So what I'm going to do is fully load my brush. That's really important. I'm using a big brush that holds a lot of paint, and I'm making sure it's fully loaded. Not just the tip of the brush, but all the way up to the ferrule. And then I'm going to start my wash at the top. I'm going to angle my board even a little bit more, and I'm going to make a stroke across my page. Very quickly, I'm picking up another load of paint, and I'm going to go into the bead. So do you see here how the paint is pooling at the bottom there? That is called the bead. And what I want to do for my next stroke is go just above the bead with my loaded brush and carry the bead across. I'm going to pick up some more paint. Go about just above where the top of the bead is and carry it across. And you just repeat the process all the way down the page. It's important to work quite fast because you want your wash to dry evenly, and you don't want it to start drying before you've created the stroke, and then you might get streaks. So as you can see, I'm working really quickly. Each time I get to the end of my stroke, I'm picking up more paint and making my stroke. If you find that your washes are streaky, then there's a few things you could be doing wrong. You could be not overlapping your bead enough. In which case, try going a little bit higher with each brush stroke, or it could be that you don't have enough of a bead. If you don't have enough of a bead, tilt your page a little bit more and vary the pressure of your brush on the paper. Press a bit harder, basically, to release a bit more of the paint with each stroke. And just keep going down your page until you get to the bottom. When you get to the end, make your final stroke and then take some clean tissue and very carefully wipe the excess paint off the tape. It's really important that you do this. Otherwise, you will get what is called a back run, which is when the pigment runs back into the wet wash and it will spoil your wash. You should also wipe down each side of the tape, and the best way to do this is to turn your board around so that you don't accidentally damage your wash. Then lay the board down flat and allow it to dry. I've still got a little bit there, and it's so tempting to go in and try and fix that with the brush. But if you do that, you will mess up your wash. So the best thing to do is just let it be. 6. Graded Wash: That was the flat wash. Now we're going to have a grow at the graded wash. A graded wash is where you start with quite an intense color, and then you gradually decrease the amount of pigments, so you're going from intense to basically transparent. I'll show you how to do that. Again, you want to start with enough paint. To cover the whole area. You do not want to run out of wash halfway through. So again, I'm working wet on dry. And I'm going to make my first stroke. My brush was less fully loaded at that time, but that's okay. I've still got a bead there, and just means for my next one, I'm going to take a bit more, and I'm going to make sure I overlap enough. So there we go. I'm going to do one more of full pigment. I can press a bit harder to release a bit more of the pigment. Now I'm going to start gradually decreasing the intensity of my color. And to do that, I'm going to gradually take a bit of the pigment out with each stroke. So I've got my water jar here. And all I'm going to do is a very quick dunk in the jar. Okay? It's just releasing a tiny bit of pigment, and I'm going to make my stroke. Now I'm going to release a tiny bit more, just shake it off the edge there and make my stroke. Release a tiny bit more and make my stroke. And I'm just going to keep doing this, still carrying the bead down the page, still not fiddling with my wash. But gradually, the amount of pigment is reducing. So just dipping in my water, using gravity, and carrying my bead down the paper. As I get nearer the bottom, I can shake out even more of the pigment and basically almost work with a clean brush. It might feel extremely strange to work with the paint so wet, especially if you spend time trying to learn how to control the paint. And now I'm basically telling you to use the paint so wet that it's difficult to control. So just trust the process because you will end up with very beautiful washers. Now, for the last bit, I am going to control it a little bit more. I've cleaned my brush. I've tapped on the edge of my water jar, and now I've got so much water here that I'm just bringing that bead down to the end with a slightly less wet brush each time. And it's slightly less wet because I've just tapped out some of that excess at the top of my jar. Make sure you cover the whole area, and then once again, lay it flat. Beautiful. Do the same thing with your tissue, clean up any excess that's on the sides. And then lay it flat to dry. 7. Variegated Wash: That was the graded wash, and now we're going to have a go at the variegated wash. Those two washers, the flat wash and the graded wash, I did onto dry paper, and that's my preference for those two kinds of washers. But for a variegated wash, my preference is to work on wet paper. This allows the paint the different colors to mingle more easily. So hopefully, you can see that that section of paper is wet. The secret with working on a wet page is timing it so that you begin the painting at exactly the right moment. You want the shine to have just come off the paper, but for it not to have dried too much. And I've mixed up my three wash colors, so they are ready to go. So I'm just following exactly the same process with a couple of minor alterations. When you work onto wet paper, you need to have slightly less of the paint and water in your brush. If you work with a very wet brush, you can end up with a flood on the wet paper. And the second thing is, you may not have quite as much of a bead as you can see here there's very little bead, but that's fine because the wet paper underneath is helping the paint travel across the page. Now I'm going to switch into a beautiful pink. This is permanent ezarin crimson mixed up and ready to go. Again, instead of really wetting the brush like that, which will give me a flood, I'm actually controlling how much is in there, tapping a bit off, and then I'm going to just overlap with my yellow and come in with my pink. I got a little bit of a streak there and I'm going to fix that by just very quickly coming in. I'm going to take my painting off the slope and rather work it on the flat. I want more of a mingle between the red and yellow, so I'm going to because I'm being quite quick, I'm going to go over that again. But you should be very careful about going over your wash more than once. If you do do it, make sure you do it very, very quickly. Bring that down one more time. And now I'm going to switch into my blue this is my lovely sal blue. Again, instead of overloading the brush, I'm controlling the amount. I've got a bead there. Notice that I'm changing the tilt of the board depending on how much of a bead I've got. Now, I've tainted the brush with the red. So I'm going to clean the brush. Otherwise, I'm going to taint the color in my tub, picking up some more, and I'm going to go back into that bead and carry it down. Again, I'm washing, tapping on my cloth, picking up some more, taking the bead. Washing, tapping on my cloth, picking up a bit more, but controlling it, bringing it across. You have to make peace with the fact that you can't control it exactly. But actually, that's one of the joys of watercolor. Now I'm only in the blue, so I don't need to clean it in between strokes, and I'm going to load flat and allow those colors to mingle however they want to. 8. Painting a Sky: Now we know how to make the three types of washes, but it's one thing to do a little exercise on paper. It's another thing to actually use the washes in a painting. So we're going to have a go at painting a sky using a variegated wash. And once we've done it, we're going to check on a few birds. Job done. I'm going to use this photograph as my source image, but I'm not going to try and replicate these exact colours. At the top of my painting, I'm going to use burnt sienna. Then I'm going to transition into Cerlean blue hue and then use Nickel Azo yellow. So I'm going to start at the top with my burnt sienna. I'm working on dry paper, and this is a little more challenging than the previous exercise because the papers wider. So we're going to need to go a little bit faster. So I'm making sure I'm picking up lots of paint in my brush, and I'm just going to make my stroke across my page. Very quickly, make my next stroke. And I'm picking up the bead and pushing it along the page. I'll do one more brown. Enciena. Okay, and now I'm going to quickly change color into my light blue, serlem blue, and I'm picking up the bead. And moving it along. Now, I'm washing my brush because it's tainted by the brown. Back into my blue, pick up the bead, move it along. Wash the brush, pick up the blue, move it along. Now I'm not touching the brown anymore. I'll do one more wash just for safety's sake. And now I'm just working in my blue. I'll do one more blue, and now I'm going to transition to my yellow. So clean brush, picking up my yellow. Working into the bead. Love this yellow. It's so strong. This is a professional pigment, and it's really strong and powerful. I got a bit of dry brush there on the paper, but that's okay because I'm going to just come over it there because I was very quick. And for my last stroke, I'm just going to use a clean brush. I'm not picking up paint, and I'm just working across. Great. Now, very quickly, I'm going to wipe my edges. Now I'm going to lay my wash flat and allow it to dry a little bit. But before it dries completely, I'm going to pick out some of the cloud shapes. So this is just clean tissue, and I want a smallish edge that I can control. And I'm just going to touch down into the wet paint to pick out some clouds. Then I'm going to fold that bit, take a clean bit. I can get fancy with some strokes like this if I want to the timing for this is important. If you try and pick up your cloud shapes and you're too late, nothing will happen because it will be too dry. I'm now going to let that dry completely and then I will add the birds. 9. Adding Birds: Painting has dried completely, and now I'm going to paint the birds. I'm going to use two colors to create my black. The first color is permanent Alizarin crimson. And the second color is Thalo green, blue shade. This is one of my favorite methods to create a black. You can see the green there. And if I take a bit more of that pink, you can see the pink here. And when I get them together, it's like magic. Because I get this beautiful, deep, interesting black. And I'm using a small brush that it's a little quill mop brush, a size two, a very cheap brush, but it's lovely because it comes to this really sharp point, and it's perfect for this kind of detail. And now I'm just going to paint a few birds on. I'm not going to draw them first. I'm not going to worry too much about getting it perfect. I'm just going to use the weight of the brush to get the main shapes in. You don't have to paint all the birds. You can be selective about which ones to include. As they get further away, I'm going to make my paint tiny bit less dark as they go into the distance. So I've just taken a bit of the pigment out of my brush, and you can see I've got this lighter gray. At the moment, I'm just leaving gaps where the white of the birds is, and also where there's a bit of brown on them. I'm just leaving gaps. I need a darker color for the swing. If you pay attention to how much weight you're putting into the brush, as you make these wings, you should be able to get them hopefully in one stroke. If we do about five birds, and this one, I'm purposefully going to chop off the bottom of the wing, so I'm activating the bottom edge of the painting. I'm paying attention to where the wings join the body to try and get the shapes exactly right. Now I'm going to cheat and I'm going to use a tiny bit of acrylic gouache for the white, and I'm using this number six round brush and I'm going to pop in just the highlights on the birds. There we go. And then as a final step, I'm going to take a little bit of bird sienna. I've got some here back to my soft pointe brush, and I'm going to pop in a third color into my birds just to add that little bit of extra definition. So it's just detailing, not much, just a tiny bit here and there. Simple, three colors, no fuss. And the final one. There we go. Take the tape off. You don't want to leave tape on your picture for too long. As soon as you can take it off, do take it off because otherwise, it becomes harder to get it off without damaging the paper. And there we have a simple variegated wash with some birds. 10. Playing with Washes: Now you know how to create three types of washes and how to have a go at a variegated wash as a sky. So now I want to invite you just to play with your paints. I'll show you a way of doing that. So I've wet my page. I hope you can see there's a little bit of a shine on it. I'm just going to explore a few different colors. So this is Cotman Windsor Newton Cotman, serlean blue hue. And I know that this because it's a student grade paint, it's quite a weak color. So I'm going to use quite a lot of it in my brush, and I'm just going to play with a wash. And I might put a little bit here. I'm just going to wet the page again because it's got quite dry and softening that blue edge beautifully. Lovely. I'm going to come in at the bottom with a little bit of ultramarine blue. This is a beautiful color. I don't have to put it all uniformly on. I might put a little stripe here, see what happens. Then I'm going to take just for fun, a contrasting color. This is a beautiful pearl scarlet. She's a very strong vibrant orange, and I'm going to just come right in here and see what happens. I'm going to wash that off and put another stroke of it here coming from the side. Take a little bit out and just ease that along. And now I'm going to wait and see. It can be very calming just to watch and observe as your paints merge together. I'm going to soak up the excess paint, and this time I'm doing it with the tip of my brush, which can give you a more accurate and precise way to soak up excess paint. You just need to keep taking the moisture out of the brush in between each pickup. While that orange is still quite wet, I'm going to come in with a smaller brush and a thicker amount of it and just make another stripe in here. I'm taking out the orange on the edge where I don't want it. And I'm going to just let that dry and see what happens. Here's one I did with the same colors that came out really beautifully, and I added a few birds. I've been trying to replicate that. So far, I haven't been able to get it as beautiful as that. Here's another example. What is noticeable is that French ultramarine is famously granulating. And I decided I didn't want such a granulating blue at the bottom. So I bought this tube of Hodam Aquile paint, ultramarine finest, which is less granulating, and that's what I've used here. The point is you can play with your paints, and you will learn a lot about the different strengths of each paint and about how far it travels and about the granulation. And it's a really great way to practice your technique with washers and your timing with the wet and wet method. So this little painting has now dried, and as you can see, it's got some really lovely things going on. The darker blue, the ultramarine has worked its way up into the cerulean blue, and I've got these beautiful soft edges. And where I've painted the thicker orange in it's left these interesting streaks. And this could now become whatever you can imagine. So I could add some birds in the distance or I could add some trees in the front as a kind of silhouette it becomes a playground, and it all started with just play and see what happens. So there's so much fun to be had with this method, and I really hope you will give it a go. And then the last thing I want to show you is this was the painting I did before with birds. I decided to add a couple more birds going further into the distance. This is the same three colors and the same method working into the bead, but it was done on wet paper. And as you can see, the mingling of the colors has happened more successfully on this one. So have a play with lots of different variations, timing, wetness, dry paper, and just enjoy exploring what your paints can do. 11. Conclusion: I hope you found that useful and feel like you've got a new skill under your belt. Washes are really fun to create. We looked at the three types of washes, and then we put that into practice in a little painting of a sky with some birds. Don't forget to take a quick photo of your exercises and your final painting of your sky with birds and upload it into the class project gallery so that I can offer you some personal feedback. And if you enjoyed the class, I'd be really grateful if you could leave a review. If you want to connect with me on Instagram, you can find me at Catherine Jennifer Designs, same on Facebook and same on YouTube. Until next time, thanks for watching.