Watercolor, my favorite medium!

 Hi Charlie! Today I wanted to talk about one of my other hobbies, watercolor. I do like drawing and painting in 

general but I really like it because I think it looks great, it doesn’t smell anything (yes I already tried oil painting and 

it smelt awful) and I find it easier than other mediums. I will explain the basics and what I’ve learned, and show 

you the steps I follow creating this painting:

 

I started watercolor as soon as I was able to hold a brush, but as expected at first it looked like nothing:

I was using everyday paper, with cheap watercolor for children so the paper was buckling a lot, and I had very 

light pigments. But it didn’t matter at first since I was just discovering it.

So when you paint, you absolutely need watercolor paper, otherwise your paper is going to tear apart and buckle

a lot, even when dry. I found an old drawing of mine (I must have been around 10) showing this perfectly:

I believe I used watercolors I’m still using from Winsor and Newton because my mother gave it to me, but you can

see the paper is not adapted. Now I prefer to use Etival cold press watercolor paper because it can handle a lot 

of layering. If you use a sketchbook, make sure it is adapted for watercolor because you will have the same issues,

and it will bleed on other pages. I use moleskine watercolor sketchbook because I really like the format, it is great 

to make thumbnails, little paintings and experiment!

Here is my old drawing, it is supposed to be an apple ;)

And my sketchbook with the first page

You also need to have a good brush. And yes I say “a” because the majority of the time I only use one brush and 

eventually switch to another one for smaller details or if I need to cover a very large area. So I recommend you 

buy one really good brush and use it all the time. I personally use the “da vinci casaneo” in size 2 but it’s up to your 

preferences! The better the quality of the brush, the more it will hold water and it will make the process of painting 

a lot easier and smoother for you. You know your brush is good quality when after using it without drying it, it is still 

wet after 4 hours. Before I was painting with water brushes (a brush with a water reservoir), but now I prefer using 

normal brushes because I have a better water control.

The brush I use all the time

For the paint I recommend you buy a set of 12 watercolors, since you will just get lost with more color. You can get 

it for about 10 or 12 euros and it lasts forever (still haven’t finished my first set!). I really like the Winsor and Newton set, 

but once again it’s up to you. There are 3 forms of watercolor: pans, tubes, under a liquid form or watercolor pencils. 

I sometimes use tubes and watercolor pencils but I prefer pans.

The Winsor and Newton pans set I will use for this painting

You will also need a light pencil (H or lighter), a rubber, tape if you don’t use a watercolor block, a tissue, a spray 

of water (this is optional but useful) as well as water jars or glass. Ideally take 2 glasses, one for clean water and 

the other for rinsing your brushes. With one jar you will have muddy watercolors, and the painting will look darker.

So first of all, either choose to paint from memory / invent something, maybe painting thumbnails before you do it 

on a bigger scale to choose your composition; or use a reference picture. For this painting I picked a reference picture 

among my photos. I think it is always great to use your own, because it evokes and reminds you of something and 

it is more personal than just going on Unsplash or other pictures websites. 

 

This is the picture I chose, I took it at the end of a walk along a river in the mountains with the sun reflecting in 

the water. I found it so pretty that I wanted to make a painting out of it!

I prepared my sheet of paper, taping it to my desk to avoid the paper buckling too much (because even with watercolor 

paper if you are layering too much it will buckle). You will notice that the paper already buckles a lot and that’s because 

my lovely cat spilled two glasses of water on the paper before I started. And I started making a very light sketch of 

what I thought were the main elements. Be careful not to make it too dark, or you will see it on your final painting. 

You can also buy a kneaded eraser to make it lighter. The mistake I made was spending 3 days on a sketch, 

even though it was useful afterwards. But painting a landscape is much easier in terms of sketching than painting 

a building, or in that case an organ.

Light sketching for this painting

My sketch with the final result

Then I started to paint the first layer, also called first wash. The goal is to have the basic coloring of each area, 

determining where the lighter areas will be. In this case, it is in the top right area. You need to first moisten your 

paper (you can either do it with a large brush or a water spray). You will see the quality of your paper there, 

if you can’t even finish to humidify your paper that some areas are already dry, maybe you should consider changing

your paper. Then use the wet on wet technique: on the wet paper, use your colors with water on your brush. 

Be aware not to drown the paper under water, but try to use the right amount. For the colors, you can use the 

one from your set or mix colors. I only needed to mix colors for the turquoise/blue so I mixed some phthalo blue 

with sap green and viridian hue.

Mixed blue                My first wash

When working with watercolor, you always need to work from light to dark because you can’t go back. When you 

put too many dark colors like black or brown it is difficult to make something out of it. So afterward I worked areas 

by areas, not trying to replicate every single detail but instead looking at the main colors and shapes and feigning 

details. If your work is looking exactly like the picture, then it is of course very impressive but then it looks more 

like a copy than a painting with a reference to the original image. That is why I try to paint loosely and I try not to 

control too much of the paint. Of course this is just my opinion, because a lot of people prefer to work with tight 

brush work, and I like the look of it on oil paintings! 

After a few washes and a few hours, here's the result!

I like to cheat a little bit and use white gouache mixed with water to make some areas lighter and create 

some spatter effects. Here I put paper to create the effect in the trees only. Of course go and wash your 

hands after this technique ^^

Here it is, I just had to do the most satisfying part: remove the tape.

You can see that as always it is not perfect since some pigments spread under the tape, but don’t worry, you 

just have to put some white gouache (with no water this time) on the areas you want to cover.

And here it is! I think I put a bit too much black (I should have used darker blue instead) and that some areas should 

have been worked with a smaller brush to have more precision over. But overall I’m really happy with the result and I 

think it looks great! If you find this picture looks brighter, this is because I've took it with sunlight instead of a lamp, 

it always makes it look nicer to the eye.

If you want to learn more, here are some Youtube channels and videos I find useful:

• Eric Yi lin from the channel “Café watercolor” talking about loose painting with a demo: 

  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NWSXVUs-B1o&t=129s

• Steve Mitchell from the channel The Mind of Watercolor talking about thumbnails: 

  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZKllFTjg7k4&t=711s

• Makoccino talking about the use of reference pictures: 

  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uNaw-jHJAew

I particularly like the youtube channel of Eric Yi Lin because I really like his way of painting but the others have great 

videos too.

I know some people in the section also use watercolor a lot, so please don’t hesitate to share your experience with 

it, or if you have other ways of painting, you just started etc… Please comment :)

Hope you enjoyed my article and thank you for reading!

Astrid