I’m always trying new things with my painting and I wanted to share three techniques I am enjoying lately.
The order of laying down the paint. I’ve been drawn to flowers lately but in a loose style. There are different colors for the richness of the petals and the stamen. I tried painting a poppy from the outside in but the colors blended too much. When I painted from the center out, the colors stayed put while still blending because the middle was a smaller amount of paint and water so it dried more quickly.
Changing up my paint values a different way. When I work with my watercolor puddles, I usually add so much water to make my mixtures more fluid that they get much lighter in value. Then when I want to go darker, I add more pigment to one of the sides of my puddle mixture and go from there. Essentially going from light to dark. But recently I have been letting my puddles stay darker and while I have my paint on my brush, I dip into the water and take the excess off of my brush on the rim of my water container. This way I lighten just what is on my brush so I can have more variety in my paint colors and I can move more quickly through my painting without layers drying in between.
Dropping in more colors with wet into wet washes. One of the things I love the most about watercolor is how the colors blend into each other. Painting a wash on the paper and then dropping a darker value wash into that current wash before it dries is another way to get variety and texture in a painting. It also helps with getting a nice and unexpected pattern as well. The blending on the paper is frozen in time and it is so beautiful!
Interested in painting too? I have a watercolor guide with videos here! I share tips, tricks I wish I knew when I started painting.
xo,
Erika