Beebly's Watercolor Vault - Your watercolor painting knowledge base.

Popular Compositional Themes As a pastime, watercolor legend Edgar Whitney inventoried and cataloged successful painting compositions. He weighed the primary visual masses by size and value as well as arrangement and came up with six visual themes that most successful paintings appear to fall into. As an aid for composing paintings, these themes were passed on to his students, including Tony Couch, who wrote about them in his book: Watecolor: You Can Do It!. What we have here are the symbols of first impressions of paintings. The vague shapes and values that first attract your eyes to interesting paintings have...

Do your watercolor paintings look like they need a creative boost? Well, we've got you covered! Here are 13 watercolor techniques and ideas you can use to bring your paintings to the next level!

Follow along as award-winning painter William "Bill" Dunn shows how to paint this charming watercolor landscape of the vineyards of Napa Valley.

What are the professional watercolorists preferences for tools and colors? The following lists include color, paper and brush preferences of accomplished, professional artists, past and present. For some artists, it doesn't take much in the way of materials to make great art. CHARLES BURCHFIELD (1893-1967) Paper: Early work - mounted light weight HP Strathmore; Mid career - HP, CP or Rough, usually CP Whatman or Arnold; Late career - mould-made rag papers, gelatine sized. Brushes/Palette: 1 pointed red sable, 3 straight black sable (camel hair) brights, 4 diagonally trimmed brights, 2 pig bristle brights cut short (for scrubbing). Palette used...

The Color Wheel The 12-part Color wheel is a representation of the visual spectrum of light that us humans can actually see. It is the rainbow we see through the dispersion of white light through prisms and raindrops. The visible spectrum (traditional ROYGBIV) is a very small range of the whole electromagnetic spectrum that runs from radio waves on the long end to Gamma waves on the short end. Each color has a specific wave frequency that our eyes perceive as different color sensations. The basic color groupings that concern artists are the Primary colors (3), the Secondary colors (3),...

Using watercolor pencils is a unique and incredible way to combine painting and drawing to create art. It's a medium that provides you with the best of both worlds. They look like regular colored pencils but behave like watercolors when mixed with water.