4. Watercolor – Equipment and Basic Techniques

One of the advantages of watercolor painting is that it calls for but little in the way of equipment. In the previous chapter we have already discussed the matter of choosing one's pigments — whether for oil or watercolor work — and arranging them on a palette. Now, before we begin the first exercises in watercolor technique, we shall consider briefly the other materials needed before you can start to work.

Brushes

Brushes are of great importance. Cheap ones on the whole are of doubtful value. As one needs but few brushes, he should buy the best. Those of red sable hair are generally so considered. The round, sharply pointed type is probably the most popular, but flat square ones can also be useful at times. A rec­tangular space such as a door or window shutter, for instance, can often be painted with lesing a stroke of a flat, sable brush about three-fourths of an inch wide.

One generally needs about three round red sable brushes — small, me­dium and large. For any given piece of work, it is best to use the largest size brush practical. Small brushes require too frequent dipping and can lead one into finicky ways. For bold sketching (such as outdoor work) and for laying large washes (as on skies and backgrounds), so big a brush is needed that one sometimes feels forced to use a cheaper sub­stitute for sable, such as imitation sable, camel hair or squirrel. The Number 17 camel hair "dabber," for instance, costs a fraction of the price of a red sable brush the same size. However, since camel hairbrushes lack spring and seldom hold their points well, they are not recom­mended except in the large sizes for bold work.

For certain types of work, particularly for scrubbing out high lights, stiff bristle brushes are sometimes used.

Care of Brushes

With proper care, good brushes will give years of service. Rinse them frequently, as you use them, and wash them thoroughly when you put them away. Don't leave them stand­ing for long periods in paint or water — and don't allow them to dry in cramped positions.

The most desirable papers for watercolor painting are usually hand­made and imported, the best known perhaps being Whatman from Eng­land, Arches from France, and Fabriano from Italy. These papers are handmade

Figure 5. Round red sable brushes in several sizes are preferred for most watercolor work (top left). Flat red sables are useful for single strokes (center left). Bristle brushes are used for scrubbing out highlights (bottom left). In the larger sizes camel hairbrushes are an inex­pensive substitute for sable (bottom right).

of the very best rag stock, following traditional methods hand­ed down through the years from father to son (not at all practical here in the United States); their properties are toughness, long life, surface tex­ture, which cannot be matched by the very best machine-made papers, whether American or imported. A good handmade paper will withstand a considerable amount of soaking, scrubbing and erasing and will age with little deterioration.

The weight (thickness) of watercolor paper is important. Thin papers should generally be avoided, espe­cially for large work, since they buckle when wet and are inclined to split if stretched. Weights vary from a light "72 Ib." to the extreme­ly heavy "300 Ib." and, occasion­ally, even "400 Ib."

Some papers are smooth; these are identified by the phrase, "hot pressed," or "HP." The more popular surfaces, however, have a grain or "tooth." "Cold pressed" or "CP" indicates a slight grain; "rough" or "R," a heavier tooth. These last two have an indescribably sympathet­ic texture, excellent to work on and pleasing to look at.

Watercolor papers come in several sizes, but the most popular is the "imperial," approximately 22" x 30". This is a convenient size for the aver­age painting and it can be halved or quartered for sketches. Papers are also available in spiral-bound pads and in blocks that are conven­ient for sketching.

Mounting and Stretching Paper

It is possible to buy handmade paper already mounted but don't con­fuse it with the cheaper illustration boards which are not as responsive. There are also many experienced artists who like to work with unmounted paper. As a rule, however, it is more satisfactory to paint on stretched or mounted paper as it eliminates buckling and gives the artist more control over his washes.

There are many methods of mount­ing and stretching paper and you may want to try several before decid­ing which suits you best. The following are among the simplest and most practical.

For mounting, the paper selected should be of good quality, though not necessarily of heavy weight. First, it is dampened thoroughly with a sponge (or soaked in water) until limp; then it is pasted evenly all over the back with some water-soluble adhesive such as bookbind­ers' paste or diluted glue. After this, it is laid, paste side down, on heavy mounting board which has been previously dampened. Next, with a protective sheet of paper placed over it, it is rolled or brushed or scraped to force out air bubbles and promote uniform adhesion. A pho­tographer's squeegee is useful in this connection. The whole is then weighted down where it can dry flat, perhaps between two drawing boards loaded with books. Blotting paper is sometimes laid over the mounting board to hasten the drying process. Leave it until thoroughly dry or the mount will buckle.

Figure 6. When stretching wet paper, be sure the frame is at least 2 inches smaller than the paper in both dimensions. The paper is tacked to the frame as shown here.

The simplest stretching process consists of pasting or tacking the edges of a wet sheet of paper to a wooden drawing board or stretching frame, causing the paper to shrink smooth and tight as it dries. (See Figure 6.) This sounds easy but takes something of a knack. Be sure that the frame is at least two inches smaller than the paper in both length and width or the paper may work loose; and don't remove the finished painting from the frame until it has dried for several hours or it may wrinkle badly.

Other Equipment

Every artist soon develops his own preferences for certain ways of work­ing and a particular assortment of tools and paraphernalia. Aside from paints, paper and brushes, however, the only other essentials for water-color painting are a palette of some kind (a white dinner plate will often do very well), several cups or small pans for mixing washes and rinsing brushes, blotters, rags, a sponge pencils, erasers, a razor blade or pocket knife (all of these can be useful though you may not need all of them at all times), a drawing board or easel and a convenient place to work.

Getting under Way

Once you have assembled your equipment, you will find it helpful to spend sometime becoming acquainted with it before undertaking your first painting. While there is no one best way of doing this, the following exer­cises afford a sound guide.

To begin, let's examine the several ways in which you can apply your watercolor paints to your paper.

Exercise 1: Line Work — First, lay your color on in what might be called a linear manner. In other words, you "draw" your color into place using strokes of your brush. These strokes may vary in width from hair­line (A, Fig. 7) to an inch or more (B). They may also vary greatly in length and direction: long, short; straight, curved; wavy or irregular (C and D). Some lines may be sharp (C), some soft (E), some uniform, some graded (F), some broken (I and J). They may differ in color and in value. Such lines will also show contrasts of texture, these being determined very often by the Surface of the paper you use. Try your hand at all these. Don't attempt to copy exactly those shown in Figure 7, but see how many different kinds of lines you can draw. Experiment with all of your brushes.

Exercise 2: Dry-brush Work — When doing the exercises mentioned above, you will find that if the brush is dip­ped frequently into paint which is liquid, the strokes will be sharp and clean-cut (G) — unless, of course, the paint is extremely pale. How­ever, if the brush begins to run out of paint (or if the paint was originally thick), the brush strokes will be ragged and broken (K), particularly if the paper you are using is rough. These latter strokes and paintings developed mainly through their use are designated "dry-brush" work. Experiment with this technique and see what interesting effects it can suggest.

Though relatively few watercolorists paint entirely in dry-brush, many use it occasionally, particularly for the development of certain textures: rough building materials, the bark of trees, foliage and coarse cloth, for example.

Exercise 3: Dabs, Stipple — Instead of drawing with your brush, you can "dab" your color into place, merely touching the paint-laden brush to the paper again and again (H). By using brushes of different types and sizes and by varying your brush po­sition or pressure, you can produce an amazing variety of brush marks.

Occasionally, artists paint some passages by using hundreds of tiny brush marks placed side by side in close proximity. This type of work (L) is called "stipple" or "stip­pling." By juxtaposing contrasting colors, a vibration or scintillation can be set up which is sometimes useful in obtaining atmospheric effects, ap­pearances of distance, or suggestions of movement as in foliage. (For excellent examples of this technique, which is known as "pointillism," study the work of the French Impres­sionists.)

Wash Laying

In addition to the methods just dis­cussed, there is another, wholly different but equally basic, watercolor technique — wash laying. The term "wash," as we use it here, means a mixture of any watercolor pigment (whether black, white, gray or colored) and water; also the tone which results from flowing such a pigment over the paper and allowing it to dry. The same word is also used as a verb to describe the act of applying pigment with this technique; in other words, we " wash " a given area.

Figure 7. Examples of line work, dry-brushing, dabbing, and stippling

Blacks and browns offer a good starting point for exercises in wash laying. (Incidentally, when we speak of a "wash drawing," we usually think of a watercolor drawing in one of these neutral tones.) Pigments with little sediment are the easiest to handle and produce washes of the greatest clarity and uniformity. In most makes, Lamp Black is good. Ivory Black generally has a bit more tendency to precipitate. Sepia is perhaps the most amenable of the browns. With these under control, you will be ready to try all your colors.

Exercise 4: The Flat Wash — Washes are of two kinds: flat (uniform) and graded (changing in tones by easy degrees). Fill a saucer about half or two-thirds full of water and stir in a quantity of the selected pigment until you have a mixture of medium strength. (Later try it thick and thin.) Dampen a sheet of stretched paper (or mounted paper, fastened to your drawing board) with plain water ap­plied with your large sponge or brush. This preliminary, while not absolutely necessary, makes it easier to lay a good wash. Let the paper stand until the last vestige of shine has disappeared. Pitch your board at an angle of five or ten degrees from the horizontal. If too flat, the pigment will not flow properly; if too steep, the wash may get out of control, running from the board. Have rags or blotters at hand for such an emer­gency. Washes flow more freely on smooth paper than on rough, and some pigments run more quickly than others. Pitch controls the speed of flow, thus affecting the character of the wash.

Now select a fair-sized brush (Num­ber 7 or 8 is good) and you are ready to begin. (Avoid small brushes; they are intended only for detail.) Your first washes should be about five or six inches square. Boundary lines may be drawn, although it is easier not to be so restricted. Later, it is excellent practice to try filling exactly the penciled boundaries of squares, triangles and circles. Still later, practice on large areas. It takes considerable skill to control washes when you are painting a pic­ture, so get all the practice you can.

Rinse the selected brush in water (cultivate the habit of doing so fre­quently); remove most of the water by touching the brush to cloth or blotter (or by "slatting" it toward the floor — an efficient measure not popular in the home!); dip it in the pigment (stir the color every time you do so) and lift it, ready to apply to the paper.

If you are right-handed, start the first stroke in the upper left-hand corner of the selected area. Hold the brush freely and naturally, much as you hold a pencil in writing (though with its angle varied according to conditions), and, sliding it along the paper lightly, paint a horizontal stroke the desired distance to the right. The object is to apply enough pigment so that an actual puddle will form along the lower edge of the stroke. If you fail in this, redip the brush immedi­ately (don't forgetto stir!) and apply a second stroke to the same area. This matter of obtaining a puddle at once cannot be too strongly emphasized. The beginner frequently uses so little pigment that it sets immediately, each brush stroke drying as a separate stripe. (See Figure 8.)

With the puddle formed, recharge the brush (stir!) and take a second stroke from left to right, the point of the brush just touching or slightly overlapping the lower edge of the puddle, which should flow down and form again at the bottom of the new stroke. Repeat this process over and over, gradually advancing the wash down the paper. You may not have to dip the brush for each stroke (the aim being to keep the wash, puddle and all, as uniform as pos­sible), but always do so before the pigment is wholly exhausted. The larger the wash area, the bigger the puddle required.

Don't rub the paper with the brush; use a feather touch. The brush should merely convey the pigment to the paper and guide it, the wash flowing of its own accord. This is a fundamental difference between watercolor and oil painting; in the lat­ter the color is normally brushed in.

As the bottom of the predetermined area is approached, add no new pig­ment, but carry the puddle down until it exhausts itself. If there is excess pigment remaining as the lower edge is reached, absorb it with the brush, touching the latter to rag or blotter as proves necessary, or squeezing the pigment back into the saucer. Then watch the lower edge for a moment and if a new puddle forms, absorb it.

However faulty a wash may seem, never work back into it until it is dry. Trouble will almost certainly result if you do. It is far easier to learn to lay washes well than to learn to repair them when they go wrong.

Figures 8 and 9 show some typical faults; all but the last pair (5 & 6, Figure 9) can develop with flat washes. Study these with care. With a bit of practice you can learn to avoid most of these difficulties. Wire edges, how­ever, like those surrounding the wash at 1, Figure 9, are a common cause of annoyance, resulting from gravity and capillary attraction. They are most frequent when heavy, set­tling pigments are used. The bigger the puddle and the slower the drying (as with the board flat), the great­er the danger. If over conspicuous, dampen them carefully with a fine pointed brush (after they have thor­oughly dried) until they can be ab­sorbed with brush or blotter. Sketches 2, 3 and 4, Figure 9, point to the need for absolute cleanliness.

Paper insufficiently stretched, or not stretched at all, can also be troublesome if it buckles into a series of corrugations. The pigment particles slide down the hills into the valleys to dry, and the corrugated effect is evident even when the paper is flattened out again.

Alternate Methods

As pigments and papers vary in their characteristics, sometimes one manner of working is better than another. Experiment with various ways of laying tone. If a color tends to set too quickly, revealing horizon­tal strokes when dry, change your method by letting each stroke, over­lap half, or even the whole, to the previous one. Or use a rotating (stirring) rather than a direct, motion of the brush.

Figure 8. Some examples of unsuccessful washes are shown here. Wash Number 1 was run too dry with no puddle except at end of strokes. Although better, Number 2 lacked sufficient puddle and the pigment was not thoroughly mixed. If a wash is left too wet at the bottom, it may dry much darker there, leaving a graded effect as in Number 3 or it may cause " runbacks " or "fans" as in Number 4. If too much dampness is taken up along the bot­tom and the top is allowed to remain wet, an effect like that in Number 5 may result. " Fans, " such as in Number 6, can be caused by accidentally dropping pigment on a drying wash. Always leave a wash alone until it is thoroughly dry.

If you find that a left-to-right stroke causes an over-accumulation of pigment at the right, as at 1 and 2, Figure 8, substitute a back-and-forth stroke. In short, use the method which produces the best results. The main thing is to keep an even distribution of pigment and to avoid the disturbance of pigment particles once they have set.

Exercise 5: Superposition — When you have acquired the knack of laying individual flat washes fairly well, with light, medium and dark pigments, even to the extent of placing them within definite boundaries, try run­ning one wash over another which is dry, for this is a thing which you will frequently have to do in painting pictures. Unusual care must be exercised not to loosen the under­lying pigment: both lightness of touch and reasonable speed are therefore essential. Some pigments, at best, are intractable in superposition. As you work, note the ones which give the greatest and the least satisfaction.

If you superpose washes of two or more colors, you will have your first contact, so far as these exercises are concerned, with effects of color mix­ture, for one color over another creates a third. We will learn more about this in later chapters.

Exercise 6: Graded Washes, Dark to Light — As most subjects can best be interpreted by washes which grade from dark to light, from light to dark, or from one color to another, our next step is to master the technique of applying graded washes. Let us start with grades from dark to light.

Form a puddle of dark pigment at the top of a predetermined area, just as for a flat wash. Your problem is to dilute this gradually as you guide it down the paper. If you dip your brush in water and apply it directly to the puddle of pigment, advancing the wash through repetition of this process, you will be likely to obtain a streaked result. The gradation may be too rapid, as it was at 5, Figure 9. (This wash, despite its failure to give the desired result, is highly inter­esting, the light portions seeming cloudlike.) Or too much of the dark pigment from above may follow down to prevent the desired lightness be­low. So practice until you acquire the knack of obtaining the necessary uniformity.

Here is one method: With a reason­ably generous puddle of the select­ed pigment formed, dip your brush into your pigment and then into water, quickly blending the blushful of mixture on another saucer or suitable surface (the edge of your paper will do); then immediately apply it to form the second stroke of your wash, merging the new mixture with the original puddle as it runs down. For this, a rotating (stirring) motion is best. Constantly repeat this pro­cess as you advance the wash, also absorbing superfluous dark pigment as it proves necessary.

Some artists vary this method by repeatedly adding water, between strokes, to the saucer of original mixture, keeping the whole thor­oughly stirred; this is a good process. In still another method, favored for large or

Figure 9. Here are more examples of unsuccessful washes. Dark edges as in Number 1 may result when a " settling " pigment is puddled on with the paper flat. In Number 2, an oil spot on the paper, invisible before the pigment is applied, ruined an otherwise good wash. Numbers 3 and 4 show the importance of keeping tools and materials clean. The trouble with Number 3 can be blamed on paper ruined by perspiration from the artist's hands. A dirty brush was at fault in Number 4. In Numbers 5 and 6, evenly graded washes were intended, but water and pigment were not added gradually enough. However, both washes do have interesting accidental qualities

particular work, several sau­cers of the selected pigment are pre­pared ahead of time, varying uniformly in degree of strength. Washes are then applied in the proper order, each flowing gradually into the next, any excess of the darker pigment from above being occasionally absorbed. Try these grades with different pig­ments.

Exercise 7: Graded Washes, Light to Dark — It is considered easier to grade from light to dark than from dark to light. The former process is reversed. Start at the top with a puddle of pure water or light tint, adding darker pigment a bit at a time as you pro­ceed, absorbing any excess of the light pigment. For important work, the previous preparation of several saucers of pigment of varying strength is recommended. The knack is to add the darker pigment so gradually that the final wash shows perfect gradation.

Exercise 8: Double Grades — Practice washes grading from dark to light' and back to dark, and vice versa.

Exercise 9: Grading from Color to Color — Don't confine your attempts to a few pigments, but try all the colors in your box. Grade each from light to dark and from dark to light; then practice grading from one hue to another. Mix the two in sepa­rate saucers and start the wash with either, substituting the other by easy degrees. This is not only excellent brush practice but it gives you a vital contact with color mixture; it is fascinating to observe the birth of the resultant new colors. Also run washes grading from a given hue to water and then to a second hue. Washes showing gradation from color to color should be attempted, too.

Exercise 10: Two Colors At Once — By dipping one side of your brush in one hue and the other side in another, beautifully graded effects can often be formed by means of single strokes. The brush must be tried, of course, on practice paper. A flat brush is preferred. The method is at its best for quick sketching. See how well you can master this technique.

Never lose any opportunity of im­proving your dexterity in laying washes. Eventually, try all your pigments, papers and brushes, as well as different slopes of the board. Many otherwise expert painters have failed to master this trick and, as a result, are under a constant handicap which a few hours concentrated practice would overcome.

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