Watercolor painting is an art form that creates artistic representations, usually on paper, using pigments that are soluble in water. Other forms of paint use oil-soluble paints or dry pigments on sticks.
Watercolor painting is familiar to most of us, as the children’s activity is done with boxes of colored saucepans; the blocks of color are passed with a wet brush and the pigment is transferred to the water brush and from there to the paper. However, adult watercolorists use different paints.
The children’s versions do not contain the amount of pigment necessary to achieve the effects available in artist watercolors.
Children’s watercolors are usually contained in colored boxes.
Watercolor paint uses a specific type of palette for the shape – typically a large flat piece of plastic with depressions around the perimeter. The watercolor paint that is sold in tubes is pressed into these depressions and allowed to dry.
This is the equivalent of the children’s dry color cube set. Some artists use “fresh” watercolor paint straight from the tube and do not allow it to dry. They claim that colors are fresher if the paint is not allowed to dry before it reaches the paper.
Water soluble paints can be called watercolors.
Watercolor painting employs a variety of different medium-specific techniques. Perhaps the most characteristic is the technique known as wet in wet, in which large portions of the paper are wet, either with a previous application of a color wash or with uncolored water.
The brush is loaded with the pigment from the palette and dropped or patted onto the paper, allowing the color to flow wherever it wants, blooming in interesting and unexpected patterns, merging with previous applications of other colors, and forming new hues.
Wet-wet watercolor paint is difficult to control, but it can give some of the most amazing and satisfying results.
There are a variety of different techniques that a person can employ when painting with watercolors for both young and experienced artists.
If you’re interested in exploring watercolor painting on your own, treat yourself to tubes of artistic-quality watercolor paint.
Most paint manufacturers offer a “student” line that is significantly cheaper, but these paints will not produce the same results, which can be discouraging for the beginner.
Instead of buying a more complete palette of cheaper paints, buy fewer of the higher quality paints, as almost any shade can be created from mixing two or more colors.
For example, a truly dark shade of black can be mixed by mixing red and green pigments, which is why most watercolorists don’t even keep a tube of black watercolor paint in their paint box.
Watercolor painting can be a fun art for children and they can be easily mixed to create new colors.