Beginner Techniques

This is your cheat sheet for mixing colors accurately.

Use this watercolor technique to intentionally drip watercolors into a vibrant color collage.

White fur is usually notoriously difficult to paint. Here's a clever watercolor technique by Yong Chen using dry scratching & negative painting concepts.

Paint the complexity of the universe by simply using salt & watercolors, as seen in this easy tutorial given by Leonardo Pereznieto.

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),...

The Stuff of Paint Watercolor: What it is. Traditional transparent watercolor is finely ground pigment in a water-soluble binder such as gum arabic. Gum arabic is water-soluble gum produced by a species of the acacia tree and is available in crystalline form or in prepared solutions. The gum arabic crystals or granules are transparent when pure, but less highly refined varieties can be yellowish to honey colored. Gum arabic is also used in inks, adhesives, pharmaceuticals, and confections (it's non-toxic and tasteless). Other binders used for watercolor paint have included Tragacanth, a gum optained from various asian shrubs, and fish...

Paper: a little history, a little trivia The variety of surfaces used to paint, draw, write and tally on have run the gamut from cave walls, clay tablets (Sumerians 5000-2000 BC), wood planks, papyrus (+-2500 BC), to parchment (1500-250 BC) and vellum, a finer variant of parchment. Papyrus was a woven mat of reeds, pounded together into a hard, thin sheet. Parchment and Vellum are make from specially processed animal hide (calves, goats, sheep) that are smoothed to a fine finish. The word "paper" actually comes down to us from the word "papyrus". According to contemporary Chinese records of AD...

What are you going to use for your palette? If you're like most artists you'll end up with several palettes including one special one that is your favorite. I happen to have aquired 8 ro 9 in my 35 years of painting. Are you a student or beginner on the cheap? For a basic palette use a plate, preferably white. Just something that is white, non-porous, and can hold some water. Ceramic, plastic, or metal, it doesn't matter in the long run, it's just a means to an end...making art. You can use recycled margarine containers, styrofoam meat trays, ice...