Watercolor Beginners Basic Tips
Discover creative and inspiring ideas, watercolor techniques and solutions to unsolved Beginner watercolor painting problems, questions and dilemmas.
If you love watercolor, love the excitement of art, love the versatility inherent within watercolors sit down and fill your creative well!
Watercolor Tips – Limit Your Materials
Absolute beginners get started with Just 3 paints, 1 brush and 1 sheet of paper!
- Cobalt blue pb28, Winsor Lemon py175, Permanent Rose v19
- 1 Watercolour brush: Rekab 320s #2 natural squirrel hair brush
- Watercolour paper: Arches Rough or Cold Press 300 gsm 100% cotton rag.
+a fantastic section with half a dozen art supply shops located online and with retail addresses, in the USA and Australia with their links
- Beginners watercolours 10 tips to get you started – 3 tubes of paint
- Top Tips for Choosing watercolour paper
- Watercolor Fun With Brushes
Watercolour Techniques: Fast and Fun
The Basic watercolour techniques include: wet in wet, dry brush, glazing, charging, flat wash, graded wash, splatter.
- No more Fiddling with watercolours!
- Easy Watercolour basic techniques and tips
- Wednesday Watercolor Tree Techniques
- 3 Edges of Watercolor
Watercolor Color and Mixing Tips
Beginners – learn how to create the 3 areas of the painting….. background – the middleground and the foreground.
Aerial Perspective color sequencing:
Warm colors – Advance into the Front
Cooler colors – Recede into the Distance
Front: warm red, orange, yellow, green, blue, blue/lavender and finally the grey into the background.
Placing colors in this sequenced order helps beginners easily create more depth in their paintings.
Color Mixing Tips – beginners
- Did you know that mixing Opaque paints with other colors, can often cause of Mud?
- aerial perspective beginners watercolours 10 tips
- how to paint without making mud
- dive into the mysteries of blue paint
- foliage greens
- cobalt teal reflections
Creative Imaginative Techniques
Glad wrap, palette knife, molding paste, impasto, skewers, cold wax medium, using house paint brushes…. make watercolor more Creative!
- watercolour with a twist
- watercolour with a palette knife
- touching the mountain sculptural textures with watercolor
Frequently Asked Questions
1.Can gesso be used with watercolors? Yes! Used as a thin veil, a light glaze over dry paint, it makes a wonderful camouflage for areas that you’d like disguised.
2.What mixes with prussian blue for foliage greens? I suggest burnt sienna, quinacridone sienna, winsor lemon, burnt umber and raw umber to start with.
3.Do I paint my backgrounds first? Yes. First Backgrounds, then middlegrounds, then foreground and last is the focal point. *Exception is if doing botanical art on White paper.
4.What are some examples of Granulating paints? Granulators when diluted with water create texture, suitable for beaches, rocks, bark,etc. Ultramarine, Cobalt Violet, Cerulean, Viridian, Rose Madder genuine, Lunar Black, Burnt Umber.
5.What paint should Beginners start with? Cobalt blue genuine, Permanent Rose, Winsor Lemon. Then moving onto Ultramarine blue and Burnt Sienna. After that, Prussian Blue and Raw Sienna/Quinacridone Gold.
6.What is the best blue for a sky? It depends on the season and the type of sky; but generally I’d say Cobalt blue genuine.Cerulean, great for wintery cold skies.
7.Where can I find your work for sale Debi?
My art images, products…..
canvas prints, cards, hand bags, ipad covers, pillows and more are now available at Society 6 debiriley. And now at debijriley Redbubble.com !
debi riley 
Comments, Questions and Feedback are welcome, and if you have questions or ideas you’d like answered let me know! Cheers, Debi 🙂
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Dear Debi, I also love Watercolor and yours are very beautiful.
Greetings from Mainz, Germany,
ey
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thank you so kindly for such a lovely comment!! I Appreciate your stopping by, having a look around and your thoughts.
🙂 cheers, Debi
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Great tips!
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Thank You! I’m so glad you enjoyed the Page. 🙂 cheers, Debi
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Wow! Gorgeous paintings, and a very helpful page! Thanks for sharing!
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hi Yva, Thank You so much! I’m glad you enjoyed the page and found some helpful tidbits!!
Thank you for stopping by and sharing your comments, I appreciate it! Cheers – Debi
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Thank you so much for sharing this information! I started learning to draw about a year ago, and I’m now learning watercolor painting — and other media. It’s an exciting journey, and this page will help me immensely.
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hi Jonathan, I’m glad that you’re finding the Page helpful to you !! I love watercolor (ok, art in general ) and I’m sure your adventure with it will be great fun ++ exciting 🙂
Thank you for your comment! cheers, Debi
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Actually, I’m not Jonathan. He’s just a fictional character from my Sims 4 game. I’m really Judith, and I’d love for you to visit “artistcoveries” — it’s the blog where I’m sharing my journey of becoming an artist. Following your blog will be very inspiring, and I hope from time to time you’ll visit mine and share a few thoughts. 🙂
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sorry Judith! lol I had a fast peek over at your great place yesterday! 🙂
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I don’t know how to make my “Gravatar” link to my art blog instead of the “Sims” blog, so you’re not the first to call me Jonathan…LOL. I’m very glad I’ve found your blog and can’t wait to read more of your posts.
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thank you Judith. I do learn! I’ve done that before, but once they tell me their real name. I remember. mostly.lol
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Not a problem. 🙂
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Oh, guess I should leave a link LOL
https://artistcoveries.wordpress.com/
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Watercoloring can seem so…messy. Easy to wreck, was how I used to see it. You’ve explained it to be easy well. Will save your tips for the next watercolor artwork. Thanks!
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Watercolor the way I paint… is absolutely messy. True!! messy but so fun, lol. I’m am so glad you are finding these bits and pieces on the website helpful/useful. I think the real key is to just limit the palette to 2-3 colors to start, then progress on to More! Thank you for your lovely comments 🙂 cheers, Debi
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Great help for a beginner – thank you 😆
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hi Maria, its great to know you enjoyed this information and its helpful to you! Thank you – for taking the time to send your thoughtful comment! I appreciate it. Cheers, Debi
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I’ve always had the impression that water colours paintings are far more difficult than using other mediums
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with the correct materials…. they are easier. easier to ‘fix’ and resolve, soften and create the depth needed. crummy materials, do make them the worst!
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Do you have books? I just saw your artwork on this debiriley.com page I would like to have more info from you I love what you do. I’m just getting into watercolors .
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thanks!! I’m working on an ebook; I have a 150 page workbook file. Its this, that I’m converting. It is going, slowly.
I appreciate your encouragement and inquiry! thanks, and cheers, Debi
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Just wanted to say thank you. I read your articles of watercolor basic when I learned watercolour. The rules were always in my mind.
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