This class was so helpful. I tried different papers, colors, and paints and found that my favorite way to get a nice flat wash was with the wet on dry method. 

This first one is my cheaper watercolors, Marie's pan set and I used a cheap watercolor paper that I got in bulk on Amazon. It's 100% cotton, but it's not an artist quality paper. The paints get a cracked look in the pans when they dry out, which I think means that they have lots of binder?

Next, I tested the Marie's against Daniel Smith. I used Ultramarine Blue for both, and you can see the color difference. This test is on New York Central 300lbs cold-pressed 100% cotton. The one in the bottom right corner is probably the smoothest wash that I got from all my practice today.

This next one is on Magnani Italia paper with Daniel Smith. I started with a wet-on-wet wash on the top half, then flipped my paper around to try a wet-on-dry and dry brush. I dropped in a few other colors to get some variation.

This one I tried the gradient wash, starting with just a bit of wet on the very top and you can see I ran into problems at the point where I hit the dry paper with my wash. Then I did the burnt sienna wash at the bottom. I wanted to try to get the blooms, but my paper was too dry when I added my splatters so I didn't get any blooms. I just blotted the splatters off with a paper towel, and I liked the effect of the lifted color.

I decided to do another wash by mixing my ultramine blue and burnt sienna to get a stormy look. I did the wash on top wet on wet, and on bottom I did wet on dry. I did a little lifting, splattering, and scratching to get this stormy field look.

Next I switched colors to a super granulating color, Daniel Smith Imperial Purple. I worked wet on dry for this wash, gradually adding more water to my mix to get the gradation.

My last one I used Imperial Purple again and tried to get lots of texture, drips, and blooms.