You’ve almost certainly heard of watercolour painting before now. It’s a popular medium of painting found everywhere from prestigious galleries to primary school art displays. But what is it? Where does it come from? And how easy is it to learn?
How easy is it to learn watercolour painting?
In this article, I’ll explain a little bit about what watercolour painting is, and talk about how I use it to help with my mental health.
What is watercolour painting?
Watercolour paints are usually made from different pigments mixed with water. Therefore, the paints are a lot thinner and more viscose than other types of paint, such as acrylic or oil, so they spread around the page more easily.
This means that lots of watercolour paintings tend to be more about the flow of the paint and less about trying to stick to rigid lines or details.
Painting using dried pigments and water is something humans have been doing since the stone age, but the art form has had high points of popularity in the 15th and 18th centuries.
It has been seeing a slight decline through the 21st century, but it is still used by artists today, particularly by those setting out to try and capture nature or organic life.
As mentioned, watercolour also a staple in primary schools.
I’m sure many of you can remember having those old cracked and stained palettes that sat in your classroom gathering dust, and sometimes — sometimes — you got to use them. I was no different.
How did I find watercolour painting?
On my article about cross stitch, I spoke about training days on arts and crafts as part of my job as a teacher. It was through one of these that I was introduced to watercolours as an adult.
Thanks to a rather venom-tongued art teacher as a teenager, I’ve always been reluctant to put pen or paint to paper to create images, so the thought of spending an hour and a half after work to practice this was something that I did not find easy.
An art teacher sat us down and showed us some different pictures of flowers. She then gave us each a set of watercolours and asked us to have a go at painting our own flower.
My attempt was by no means good. But I found it incredibly relaxing.
Having to think about the paint — the thickness, where it was going, what I was trying to do — meant that my busy brain had to put all of that to one side to focus on what I was doing.
I particularly enjoyed the chance to experiment with how different colours mixed into each other at the edges.
In the end, us teachers spent most of that training session in silence, some gentle music playing, lost in our own worlds and experiments.
That night, I went on Amazon and purchased a set of watercolour paints, some brushes, and a notebook with pages suitable for watercolour paints.
How did I get started with watercolour painting?
Once I had purchased my equipment, I set out to simply give myself the chance to explore how the paints and colours worked.
The first thing I did was to try paint some things. I made several different banners for different Dungeons and Dragons classes. (As I’m sure you’ve realised, I love nothing more than combining classic crafts with something deeply nerdy).
These were terrible! I kept on having sections blend and leak into each other and it was a disaster. I nearly gave up on the idea entirely.
After this mess, I did two things to help me to try again and try to regain that good relaxing feeling that had got me into the idea of watercolour in the first place.
I invited some friends around for the evening for an art night. We listened to music, chatted, drank, and just messed around with whatever we wanted to do.
I decided to go abstract. I spent the whole night creating different shapes and splodges, not trying to follow any sort of pattern and plan.
Honestly, one of my favourite things that I ever made was this chaotic rainbow thing where half of the page is different colours of paint all blending and mixing together and the rest is just blank.
Next I decided to practise this with some pictures of evil mushrooms. Why evil, you ask? I don’t know, why do they have to be good? These were very satisfying.
I added leaves and flowers and trees and insects, it was so much fun!
By the time my month of watercolour was over, I’d painted three different lots of evil mushrooms and I love them so much.
This was the feeling I was trying to capture, having those moments where you can just let everything else go and focus on what you want to create in the moment.
I haven’t been back to watercolour much since, but I will, I’m just waiting for the right idea of what to paint.
If you would like to see exactly what I ended up painting, click here to view the gallery.
Tips, Tricks and Links
Practice makes improvement!
Watercolour is a method of painting that takes professional artists literal decades to learn. So there’s no shame or embarrassment if your first attempts look worse than PS1 Hagrid.
I found that letting my curiosity take the lead in what to do rather than my criticism was what helped me get past the insecurity of my own paintings.
You can find lots of good ideas on where to start on artsy.
Have a wide variety of brushes.
The first set of paints I bought was mostly fine tipped brushes. I still use these but I have also bought a pack that have many different shapes and sizes.
This has helped me create even backdrops, as well as fine line details, it really makes everything a lot easier.
Clean your water regularly.
If you find yourself thinking “this water is dirty but I’ll keep going, it’ll probably be fine” go change out your water.
Otherwise you’ll have all your yellows and greens stained brown before you know it. Not worth it. There is also this article about how much water to use by Emily Wassell.
Sticking to lines only makes headaches.
Watercolour loves to flow and spread, so you need to be ready for that. Just, go with it, it’ll be great!
Summary and Score
These little mushrooms are my pride and joy. Other examples of my work can be found in my gallery.
Budget: 2/5
You can get watercolour palettes relatively cheaply yes, but you’ll need a variety of brushes as well as some paper suitable for watercolour paints, and those can be expensive. Once you have these things though, you’re set until you run out of paper!
Accessibility: 5/5
This is a very accessible craft that everyone can have a go at. If there is something about it that doesn’t work, change it out, watercolour is about going with the flow baby.
Satisfaction: 3/5
Honestly, this one is very personal. It depends entirely on whether or not you like your art at the end of it all.
I have pages I’ve painted which I love to look back on, and others I want to burn. It’s incredibly variable.
Growth and Development: 4/5
There is obviously a lot of room to grow and improve with watercolour.
A goal of mine is to end up being one of those people in museums copying great works on an easel, and having other people go past and say “wow”.
Remember, practice makes improvement.
Overall Score for Watercolour Painting: 14/20
Watercolour is a wonderfully relaxing experience, and once you’ve got the kit, it’s lovely to just sit down and see where your inspiration will take you.
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