here comes a time when the student watercolour painter begins to realise that painting a successful watercolour that ‘sings’ with that classic luminosity involves more than simply applying the correct colour, shapes, and tones to the paper. To achieve luminosity in watercolour there is a way to apply the paint, and a way to actually paint a watercolour. I understood quite early on in my endeavours that one had to apply watercolour in a wash, that flowed over the paper rather than be actively brushed on. I call this taking a puddle for a walk. These washes could be applied in two basic ways, either block on block by painting each shape with a separate wash, akin to a jigsaw, or by using an overall wash that covered the entire paper and then building up the painting with further washes once dry. I also realised that too many washes (layers
Two-layered watercolours
Nov 18, 2022
5 minutes
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