10+1 mistakes you make with watercolors ( and how to avoid them)

As you might already noticed painting with watercolors is not always an easy task. Colors might spread to unwanted places, pigments might blur into a muddy color or you might encounter the artists’worst nighmare: you accidentally spill some colors on the finished artwork.

So the question is: how to tame this wild, uncontrollable medium to willingly serve our artistic desires?

First of all, you need to get to know watercolor as a medium better. You need to know the how-s and the why-s behind watercolor painting.

So my most important advice to you is: practice, practie, practice …

Practice a bit every day. Even a daily 10 minutes will bring enormous result in the upcoming weeks or months.

And while you are practicing be sure to keep in mind these tips on how to avoid the most common mistakes you can make when painting with watercolors:

Mistake no. 10. You don’t use quality tools

If you want to paint with watercolors, please at least use proper watercolor paper instead of your regular copy paper. Why?

Watercolor papers are thicker than regular papers, so they can soak up much more water than your average art papers you use for acrilycs, pastels, etc. I would say you are safe from 150 lbs watercolor paper, but my personal recommendation would be to aim for a 300 lbs paper.

Please avoid cheap student grade paints you can buy from your local supermakets. These brands are usually low of pigments, which means you can never paint vibrant colors with those paints. Your paints shouldn’t be expensive, first aim for a limited range of high pigmented watercolors. My recommendation is to choose a pallette of 6-8 various colors and from these you can mix various colors easily.

Mistake no. 9. Weak drawing skills

Unless you want to make abstract watercolors, sooner or later you will need to improve your drawing skills. If you want to dive into painting more seriously you need to consider take some drawing lessons too.

(BUT if watercolor painting is your hobby and you don’t have any aspiration to become a professional it’s perfectly fine if you don’t have any drawing skills. As you can see in my painting classes I always include a line art, so you don’t need to learn drawing in order to enjoy watercolor painting )

Mistake no. 8. You don’t use reference photos

There really is nothing bad to use reference photos for your paintings, just make sure you don’t get into any copyright infringements. The internet is full of good quality stock photos, so don’t be ashamed to use them for your art studies. When you start out, you need to use reference photos, otherwise how the heck would you know the correct proportions, the shapes or the color shades of your painting progress.

For example if I’d never painted a hydrangea before, I’d look up some royalty-free reference photos of a hydrangea flower on the internet. I’d paint some studies of the reference photo and when I’m confident enough after finishing a dozen of hydrangea paintings I’d start to paint hydrangeas by memory.

Mistake no. 7. You want to learn watercolors from the books

While watercolor painting books are a great resource for watercolor students, unfortunately solely using them won’t be able to help you mastering this material. When I was a kid I had little to no success by learning watercolors from books, so obviously I became frustrated as I was thinking it was my fault.

Last summer I de-cluttered my childhood room and I encountered my childhood watercolor books again. Now, as a watercolor artist I realized the reason the "childhood me" weren’t able to learn watercolors from books was not my fault at all. Unfortunately ( especially if you are a beginner ) you need to be able to see the exact brush strokes your teacher made and words describing how to make those strokes are JUST NOT ENOUGH. So if you have no success by learning painting solely from books, I’d like to ensure you it’s not your fault at all. Go watch art tutorial videos instead where you can see how the teacher works with the brush.

Mistake no. 6. You are using dirty water

Obvious, isn’ it?

But still I see so many watercolor students falling into the trap. So here is how to avoid mudding your painting with your dirty water. Use at least 3 big ( I use 3-4 decilite bowls) containers of water, so you don’t need to stand up every five minutes to change your water while you are in the middle of the painting process. Easy!

Mistake no. 5. You don’t work from light to dark

Watercolor 101 is to start with the the lightest color and gradually darken the layers. If you start with a darker fist layer, chances that you won’t be able to make a nice, sharp color contrast ( bright areas and dark areas) and your artwork will look dull because of the lack of contrasting colors. So for your first layer you should always use the lightest colors of your pallette. You can brighten the color by adding a lot of water to a little amount of paint.

Mistake no. 4. You don’t leave any blank areas on your paper

The white of the watercolor paper acts like highlights. So wherever you want to put your highlighs be sure to not leave that area empty (don’t paint on that area).

Mistake no. 3. You don’t let your paints completely dry

If you paint is still wet and you paint another color next to it, those two colors will meld together. And unless you intentionally want to achieve a wet-on-wet look, it’s best tol et your layers have enough time to properly dry. If you want to speed up the drying process, you can dry your painting with a hairdryer though.

Mistake no. 2. Overworking your colors

Putting too many colors on one area without any clear direction in your mind to follow might end up your colors turn into a muddy mess. o before you start painting it’s advisable to make som color pallette sketches where you can experiment with the colors you want to use without ruining your final artwork.

Mistake no. 1. You quit before finishing your painting

Artworks has a tendency to look ugly in the middle of the painting process. It happened to me 27879534 times that I started with an excellent line art, I painted my frist layers and my painting turned into a mess. When that happens beginners first instinct is quit because they think they ruined the painting.

However the truth is that watercolor paintings has an ugly phase starting somewhere after the first color layers which you need to endure until before the finish. I know it looks horrible, but please finish your painting until you paint every little needed details to the right place. It can help if you put away your painting for a week and you continue painting when your head cooled off a bit.

I can’t remember who said, but there is indeed a tremendous wisdom in the following sentence:

There aren’t ruined art pieces, you just haven’t finished them yet.

Aaaaaand… I promised to list an extra mistake:

+1 Mistakes are not what they seems to be

Fun fact: there are not any mistakes at all. Mistkaes are not really mistakes, they are just the natural part of the learning process. So the more you allow yourself to make mistakes, the more you will improve in your watercoloring skills.

So to sum up this article:

As the legendary Bob Ross said: „We don't make mistakes, just happy little accidents."

Want to read more of my watercolor advices?

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Happy painting!

Eliza, the Watercolour Witch

P.s. Comment below what "mistakes" do you do the most often when you paint with watercolors. My most common mistake is probably I'm too impatient to wait until a layer is dried and I have a tendency to quit before finish a painting. You can't imagine how many half-finished paintings I have over the years.

And now it's your turn: what is your biggest art " mistake"?

Eliza Sto - Watercolour Witch

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