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The wash in watercolor is what sets it apart from other painting and drawing media. When one paints with oil or acrylic or draws with pencil, the pigment stays where you put it on the drawing surface. This makes the above media more precise in their execution, unless of course you decide to paint your canvas with a shot gun!

When painting in the above media the painting or drawing is built up with lines or strokes. This is the key difference between watercolor and the above. In watercolor, the painting is built up with area washes instead. Individual brush strokes are reserved for detail.

In watercolor you are painting areas rathedetail.

In watercolor you are painting areas rather than lines, and the placement of the pigment is often secondary to where you put the water. I often strategically wet the paper - some areas dry, some damp, some soaking wet - and them just touch the brush to the paper and let the water carry the pigment around the paper. Kinda like putting a drop of oil on some water and watching it spread and making pretty reflections as it goes.

Controlling the wash depends on at least a rudimentary understanding of surface tension. Water on damp paper spreads through osmosis, while a drop of water on dry paper will stay put due to surface tension. Controlling the degree which a wash spreads is the key to being successful with watercolor.

One paints a watercolor by layering wash over wash, going from light to dark. And after the washes are all in place, then a little dry brush stroking for detail. It's important to remember when planning your washes to leave white spaces on the paper. Remember, unless you cheat and use white guash you cheat and use white guashe, you cannot paint white areas with watercolor.

There are various kinds of washes which I've described below. What I wanted to add here was the purpose of washes, which in very simple terms, is to replace the precise brush strokes found in other media. This difference, by the way, is why it is sometimes hard for folks who have spent their lives in oil painting to get into watercolor.

Washes come in two basic flavors - solid and graduated. To show larger images with finer detail, the examples of the wash will be clickable links that will show a hi-res image. The solid wash is obviously one even solid color.

When doing this, some folks leave the paper flat when doing a wash. I prefer holding it at a pretty steep angle, and then it becomes just like painting your house. The water runs down the paper and you just follow it with your brush, back and forth, until you get to the bottom. Painting a wash is like painting your house, only on a smaller scale.

Some folks think there is great mystery in doing a wash, but then some people can't paint a house either. Nothing to it, just practice.

Secret #1 - Make sure your paper is nice and damp before you start so that the water and pigment from your brush can flow INTO the water on your paper. This bears repeating - make sure the paper is nice and deating - make sure the paper is nice and damp. It should also be taped or attached to some kind of board or it will tend to curl up into a roll. The speed of the curl depends on the thickness and quality of the paper.

Secret #2 - Please remember that a successful watercolor USUALLY has some WHITE SPACES in it. You can't create white paper after you've painted over it, so remember to mask out any areas that you will want to keep white.

Also, it's not necessary to go right to the edge of your paper. If you look at watercolors you'll notice that many of them have large white irregular areas at their edges. White areas make watercolors sparkle. No white areas, no sparkle, no good, NO SALE!!

Graduated washes are a bit easier. You load up your brush with pigment and water, start at the top and work down. You shouldn't have to work back over it much. With a continuous tone wash you will need to go back and blend and work until everything is even. If you're having trouble, your paper probably wasn't wet enough to begin with.

When the above doesn't apply is when you're doing a dry wash, which simply means that the paper is dry to begin with. Do this if you don't want a solid color but want little white sparklies in your wash. This works better on rough paper which has more texture. Good for painting in tree trunks, for example, where you want the tetrunks, for example, where you want the texture to show. The trick here is having enough water and paint in your brush to complete whatever length stroke you want to make. Larger brushes are better, remember?

When your wash is still damp makes a good time to start laying in those distant trees, hills, rocks, water buildings, and other things that you don't want to appear in sharp focus. The water on your brush will blend with the still damp paper and kinda fuzz things out which creates the illusion of distance. If you want rain or fog, then don't let the paper dry at all before painting in backgrounds and everything will blur nicely. (Another example of the use of washes)

The careful use of the watercolorist's special helper (toilet paper) can be used at this time to blot out clouds, fog banks, etc.

A you can see, a lot of things happen quickly. You can re-wet the paper with your squirt bottle but it's never quite the same as when you work everything in the initial wetness.

Since a lot of things happen quickly you need to PLAN AHEAD, make your sketches, and then hit the paper with maximum gusto.

Happy Trails!

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©1997 John Beckwith