Watercolor Tricks & Techniques

Broadly speaking, your “tools” include everything from paper and pigments to your own unique vision of the world. In this section, I have tried to narrow down the term to mean those things we hold in our hand and paint with, mark with, scratch or scrape with, or otherwise use to cause an image to appear on our paper.

Here you’ll see a wide variety of tools and all the different effects they produce. Of course, the real magic when using any tools occurs when you use your own vision as well.

First and foremost among watercolor tools are, of course, brushes. They are basic to our work as painters; they’re versatile and easily available in any art supply store. Experimenting with how and when to use them will allow you to create very nearly any effect you want.

We all have our favorite brushes, old friends that we reach for first, so don’t feel you must spend a fortune on a whole quiver full of brushes in order to paint, just use what you like.

Play with all of your brushes to learn what they are capable of doing. Even if you’re an old hand at watercolor, it never hurts to go through a few exercises to warm up. There’s always the chance you’ll discover a bold new stroke you didn’t know your old brushes could pull off!

Any time I buy a new brush—even in a familiar form—I put it through its paces. Start with the obvious strokes, if you like, but then push, pull, dab or otherwise work with your brushes until you are thoroughly familiar with what they can do. You’ll know then, when you want a particular effect, just which brush to grab for and what to do with it.

Keep in mind that the effects you make with your brushes will vary with your surface. Choose the brush and the paper you want to create your own special magic.

My most-used brushes are (left to right) my old no. 12 red sable, a manmade no. 10 and no. 8 round, a 1-inch (25mm) and a ¾-inch (19mm) flat with aquarelle handles for scraping, an ancient stencil brush for spattering and rough effects, a barbered fan brush, and a rigger I’ve used for years. I find I use the no. 10 and no. 8 synthetic brushes most often.

Sable vs. Manmade

Sable is a premier luxury and one you owe yourself, if you can swing it. But sable isn’t a necessity of life. No brush, no matter how magical, will make us better painters—we do that ourselves, even if we have to work with a sharp stick!

Manmade brushes have improved dramatically over the years. Sable blends, “white sables,” nylon, Taklon, goat or ox hair brushes are all fine compromises if you are working on a limited budget. Synthetic fibers seem to hold a bit less pigment than sables, but they’re strong and sturdy, and much more affordable—and you wouldn’t feel as bad if you lost one when traveling!

Round watercolor brushes come in sizes from 000 to size 16 and up. These brushes hold a lot of paint in their deep bodies and should come to a good point when shaken briskly. If your old beloved round has lost its point, don’t despair and throw it away; it’s still a dandy tool for a lot of rough effects you wouldn’t wish on a fine new sable.

B See what happens when you hold your brush lightly and just touch the tip to your paper. Then bring down the body of the brush into full contact with the paper.

I Use the full brush shape again, this time loading the brush with one color, then dipping the tip into another pigment.

J Try loading your brush, then dry it somewhat and spread the bristles, jabbing upward with them.

K Make grassy strokes, lifting up on the end of the stroke to thin out the distribution of paint.

A round brush captured the variety of shapes here beautifully. The point was perfect for the calligraphic stems and shadows, and the body of the brush worked well for the larger negative shapes between the leaves.

Flats are among my favorites for everyday painting. I like the slightly puddled washes I can pull with them and the unexpected effects. I like their versatility, too. Don’t think because a brush is square on the end that your strokes have to be, too. Paint with the end of the brush, the corner or the side. Manipulate the body of the brush for varied strokes. Scrub it into your paper. Push up; pull down. Jab and poke your brush at the paper for new effects. (I know this sounds terribly hard on a good watercolor brush. You’ll be happy to find how much less expensive the flats are than the round sable brushes—something to do with ease of construction, I expect. Even a nice big sable flat is much less expensive than a round in comparable size.)

I used a flat brush not only in the broad, geometric shapes of the building, but in the soft sky, the sweeping foreground, and to suggest the telephone pole that gives some life to the old abandoned farmhouse. (A fan brush, worked well to suggest the bare branches against the sky.)

A Lay flat strokes with the ends of the bristles. This could be useful to depict anything from a slanted roof to barn boards to wood grain.

D Use the outside edge or side of the brush to create broken, dry-brush effects.

K Dip one side of the brush in one color, and use a different color on the other side.

A fan brush is meant mainly for oil painting and is often called a blender. I trim the end of mine in a close approximation of what I did to my bangs when I was four, making a jagged edge. This keeps the marks from becoming too mechanical. It also helps to vary how you hold and apply your brush.

F Jab just the tips of the bristles to suggest short grass, mosses, lichen, rock texture, gravel and more.

G Use the edge and tip of the fan with a slightly longer upward stroke to suggest longer grassy forms.

H Pouncing, dancing little strokes can suggest lichen, sand, loose earth—you name it.

A small, soft nylon fan brush worked here to suggest the texture of the wood on the boat and on the dock. This is a more subtle effect than if I had used a larger bristle version of this same brush.

Riggers may look bizarre, with their long, thin shapes, but looks can be deceiving. Give them a try! Riggers are so called because artists once used them to paint the rigging of ships—you may find them useful for all kinds of things. Anyplace you need the paint to feed more or less evenly over a relatively long period is a good place to reach for your rigger brush. Power lines and fences are obvious places. The lines will become thinner as you lift, so you can paint some very believable limbs and twigs with a rigger, too. Hair’s also good, or long grasses. Play with your rigger and see!

A small travel rigger brush worked wonderfully to capture the limbs on the bare tree at left, and on some of the foreground grasses. The way the brush dances and angles makes interesting and natural-looking lines.

B Use the rigger or liner to paint bare twigs—the line fairly dances as you change direction.

C Practice achieving a dry-brush effect with the side of the long rigger bristles.

F You can paint short dots and dashes with the tip of the brush, too! Here, my dots begin to look more like birds in flight.

You may not have thought of using stencil brushes with watercolor, but they’re marvelously versatile tools. They’re inexpensive, readily available in art supply stores, craft stores, and even discount and hardware stores, and they come in a variety of sizes. Use them for spattering, paint with them, even scrub out color you want to lift. They are great at helping you achieve a feeling of texture without the temptation to overwork.

A My favorite use for my stencil brush is to spatter on texture. I run the end of my thumb over the bristles to make the spatters fly off my brush, aimed at the paper at a variety of angles for more interesting effects. Clump your spatter for variation of placement and values. Try this technique for old boards, a sandy beach, rough soil or sparkles on water.

B Try jabbing upward with the ends of the bristles to suggest short grass or the rough hair of an animal’s coat, whatever.

C In a pinch, you can cover broader areas with this brush. Here I used the side of the brush for the most uniform coverage.

D Pounce on the surface with the loaded end of the brush. These strokes will became more rough and open as the brush runs out of paint.

F You can even paint with your stencil brush just as you would any other, for rugged effects. I was going for pine boughs here (so perhaps green would have been a better color choice).

I spattered color into a wet wash here for softer effects and continued to spatter as the wash dried, blotting here and there to assure a variety of values. I spattered clear water into a wet wash in the grassy area for more variations in texture. Blotting with a tissue will play up the blotched effect.

For more controlled effects, when you spatter, just protect the areas you don’t want spattered with a torn or cut paper mask. Here the spatter really approximates the pattern of the owl’s feathers.

A bristle brush is normally used to paint oils or acrylics, but it can be a very handy tool with watercolors as well. Look beyond the obvious for solutions to your painting challenges!

My little bristle brush worked great for the lacy foliage of the rough cedar tree and for foreground spatter that suggests weeds and grasses.

One of my favorite tools for my plein air kit is an old round bristle brush meant for oil paints. It’s small and lightweight, as well as inexpensive. It has a rather ragged head with stiff hairs, so it’s wonderful for spatter and a variety of texturing effects. I’ve also sharpened the other end in a pencil sharpener, so I can use it for scraping, incising, or painting—just dip it in a puddle of wash and draw with it, like a pen!

Another Handy Travel Brush

This may sound like blasphemy for a watercolorist, but for travel brushes I also enjoy the short-handled, colorful kids’ brush sets you may find in your local discount store. You can usually get a whole variety of brush types for under $5—look in the school supplies or scrapbooking section.

There are several brands, some with round handles and some with triangular ones that won’t roll off onto the floor. They’re all nylon bristles, but quite handy and affordable!

These two brushes may look odd and are not be your typical painting tool, but they work wonders for adding marvelous texture to your work.

One of the newer specialty brushes out there is called a “texture brush”—that’s what they called it in the store, honest! It has a rather oval tip, and the hairs are slightly jagged for a variety of linear effects. It’s versatile, despite its odd look.

Small, brass-or steel-bristled brushes used for cleaning your barbeque grill or other chores make for handy painting tools. Some have a scraping edge that makes them doubly useful—you can lift or push paint around with that edge.

A Scratch the surface before painting to bruise the paper slightly and produce subtle lines.

C Here’s one possible use for the wire brush—falling rain. You might also use it to suggest grass, hair, wood grain, or simply as texture in an abstract composition. Try crosshatching into a wet wash for a fresh look. Suggest a linen weave in a portrait subject’s clothing. It’s a handy brush.

A “thirsty brush” does not imply that you should take your supplies out for a drink. In case you are unfamiliar with the term, it simply means a brush that you rinse in clean water, then blot with a paper towel or tissue; if you prefer, wring out the excess moisture between your thumb and forefinger. A thirsty brush will absorb a lot of pigment and will allow you more control in a smaller area than many of our other lifting tricks. You will be able to pick out a highlight on a light-struck eye, describe the shape of a petal in detail, push your pigment around and generally manipulate your painting. A thirsty brush will soften an edge instantly.

Waterbrushes

9781600613081_0108_001

This terrific new sketcher’s tool holds water right in the handle, so there is no need for a separate water container. Waterbrushes are made by several different companies in a variety of configurations and sizes, all of which are pretty small, so while they are not really for larger works, they are delightful for sketching on the spot where your whole kit isn’t practical. Keep a tissue or rag handy and touch the brush to it when you want to change colors. Most of the paint will wick out, and a quick squeeze will flush out the rest with clear water. Let a few drops fall onto your palette to mix your colors—très convenient!

These four swatches will give you an idea of the effects you can expect using a thirsty brush; some pigments will move much more easily than others. The staining pigments, for instance, will move while wet, but are virtually impossible to influence very much when dry. Know your pigments as well as your technique to develop a degree of control.

On the left in each color sample, I’ve lifted pigment while still quite wet with a well wrung-out brush. The effect is very clean on the Manganese Blue Hue and Ultramarine Blue, but less so on the others.

On the right, I’ve let the washes dry completely, then lifted with a dampened bristle brush and blotted away the loosened pigment with a clean tissue. All of the samples lifted well except that stubborn, staining Phthalo Blue.

In this painting, I painted the clouds and layered mountain ranges directly, paying attention to values and color. Then I lifted the rays shining through the clouds with thirsty brushes of various widths, blotting up the loosened pigment to get the lightest lights. This approach gives you maximum control and let me put the rays exactly where I wanted them.

You can get a great variety of effects with a thirsty brush, depending on the size and type of brush you use. One of my favorite tools is meant for oil painters—it’s a stiff nylon bright brush called Artisan, by Winsor & Newton. This short, flat bright can pick up delicate areas of a painting.

My cat Merlin ends up being my model rather frequently, and this closeup of his eyes provides the perfect chance to use this small, stiff, thirsty brush.

Pigments

Burnt Sienna

Burnt Umber

Indigo

Phthalo Blue

Quinacridone Gold

Ultramarine Blue

Brushes

¾-inch (19mm) flat

nos. 6 and 8 rounds

no. 4 bright

Surface

140-lb. (300gsm) cold-pressed watercolor paper

Other

Salt

White gel pen

Draw in the shapes of the eyes and nose and lay in a light blue underwash with a ¾-inch (19mm) flat. Add some Burnt Sienna and Ultramarine Blue wet-in-wet with a no. 8 round to suggest his interesting tabby-Siamese markings. A bit of Quinacridone Gold flooded in on the left looks sunny. Paint around the shape of the eyes, leaving an irregular white shape around the rims of the eyes for the highlighted fur areas. Let this dry.

Lift with the no. 4 bright to correct form if needed; I lifted a bit of color to reshape his nose, which looked crooked.

Add the first wash in his eyes, also wet-in-wet, using Phthalo Blue and Ultramarine Blue in his left eye, and Quinacridone Gold, a touch of Burnt Sienna and that lovely Phthalo Blue in his right eye, painting around small areas of highlights. A no. 6 round gave me the most control when painting these eyes. The way the light strikes his right eye makes it look as if it has gold in it...it doesn’t, but the effect is too gorgeous not to try! A tiny bit of salt in that golden eye gives the illusion of sparkle.

Refine and emphasize the dark shapes around the blue eye using Indigo and Burnt Umber with the no. 6 round.

Paint in the dark pupils with a mixture of Burnt Umber and Indigo and allow it to dry. Then lift the details with a damp no. 4 bright, blotting immediately to remove the loosened paint. You can see where I lifted highlights and lines in the iris on the blue eye to give it depth and shine.

I also lifted some tiny light hairs on the cat’s fur with the same brush, then added in a few darker hairs and markings with a mixture of Burnt Umber and Burnt Sienna.

Use the sharp edge of the no. 4 bright to lift more of the individual hairs around Merlin’s face, softening and integrating edges. The sharp edge of the same brush can also work to paint the fine, dark whiskers. The no. 4 bright softens some of the light fur around Merlin’s eyes, too.

Finish by adding in thin strokes with a white gel pen to suggest the light whiskers.

Pencil and watercolor work well together in several ways. I often use pencil to do preliminary sketching before beginning to paint; the lines can add a nice touch if they are left in place rather than erased or covered. You can also draw with pencil on top of a wash to add detail and texture to your painting.

Pencil lines can just act as guidelines, as they did here in my journal sketch where the lines themselves are almost invisible.

What you can see, however, is a handy technique I use often, drawing back into a damp wash with the tip of a mechanical pencil. This bruises the paper and will create fine, dark lines that are marvelous for suggesting bare trees and limbs, as in the background here.

In this painting, the pencil drawing forms the framework for the painting, but a range of values in the washes give it shape and volume. This combination of pencil and subtle washes reminds me of the drawings of Hans Holbein the Younger.

If you prefer to erase your pencil lines, erase them after the first, light washes of paint are down. If you wait until later, you may lift some of your pigment as you erase. (In practice, though, even a light wash often serves to fix your pencil lines in place—usually I don’t worry about removing them.)

Incorporating graphite pencil into your painting seems to work best if washes are kept simple and somewhat high in key, providing a mood while helping set the pencil lines; think of the beautiful watercolors of Auguste Rodin or some of Picasso’s drawings onto which he applied washes of color. They have a simplicity and honesty I like.

Here I used a single, simple wash over a drawing of my husband done with a mechanical pencil with an HB lead. The blue captured his mood perfectly.

More Pencil Facts to Keep In Mind

Hardness/Softness: Both wood and mechanical pencils come with a range of choices from very soft leads (good for bold value sketches and places you need good darks) to harder leads that work well for light, delicate underdrawings where you don’t want your lines to show. (Beware of washing color over the softer leads, though, as they have a tendency to smudge and may muddy up your color.)

Inexpensive: While you can purchase expensive versions of both wood and mechanical pencils, the inexpensive types work just as well with your watercolor washes.

This little girl is a beauty; I had to paint her! I used a mechanical pencil to sketch in the basic shapes and tried for a likeness, then washed on paint to develop the value and color of the painting.

Using a pencil before you paint will help you capture the form and structure of your subject. This becomes particularly useful when painting a portrait, as you’ll want to make sure to capture the likeness of your subject as best you can. Here I chose an HB pencil for its range of values.

Protect the “jewels” in her crown with tiny dots of mask. When they dry, paint the crown with Ultramarine Blue and Burnt Sienna using your no. 10 round. Lay in the first delicate flesh colors, using Quinacridone Red and Cadmium Orange with the same brush. Wash on color right over the drawing.

Pigments

Burnt Sienna

Cadmium Orange

Indigo

Quinacridone Gold

Quinacridone Red

Raw Sienna

Ultramarine Blue

Brushes

nos. 6 and 10 round

Small, stiff brush

Surface

140-lb. (300gsm) cold-pressed watercolor paper

Other

HB pencil

Liquid mask

Mix up a rich wash of Quinacridone Gold and Raw Sienna with a touch of Burnt Sienna for the hair—a no. 10 round with a good point is perfect for this. When you have a mask in place, you can paint right over it—you can see Fiona’s hair laid in here.

Stronger washes of the flesh color mixture work as shadows on her skin, paying attention to their shapes but still keeping everything soft and subtle. (When you’re painting children, you need to work toward freshness.)

Add the first layer of eye color with your no. 6 round and Ultramarine Blue grayed with a touch of Burnt Sienna.

Paint in hair on the smaller version on the left in the same way as you did in step 3.

Then add washes of Quinacridone Red to her shirt using your no. 6 round. Add pupils to her eyes using Indigo with Burnt Sienna to make a rich dark mixture, using the same small brush for maximum control.

Start removing the mask on the crowns (this step shows mask still present on the smaller areas of the crown on the large version of Fiona on the right). Add color to the large jewels with the no. 6 round and Quinacridone Red mixed here and there with Ultramarine Blue for dark, rich facets.

Make any adjustments to the likeness as needed. I realized that adding the light line of her eyelid on the right made that eye look a lot bigger, and that I’d gotten her ear too small on that side as well. Time for damage control! I lifted the upper edge of her ear with a small, stiff brush and repainted it when that was dry. I then worked on the eye so it’s closer in size to the other.

Add a bit more detail in the shadows of her skin with Quinacridone Red and Ultramarine Blue using your no. 6 round. Then use these same colors to make a beautiful, clear lavender for the gauzy skirt, laying it in with your no. 10 round, and call it done.

You’ll find that most of your original pencil drawing is hidden within all the washes of color. Here you can still see the pencil within the image on the left. This is a nice touch that adds to the freshness of the subject and to the feeling of movement created with the montage composition.

An increasingly popular medium, colored pencil is wonderfully versatile and mixes beautifully with watercolor. I prefer the soft, buttery, wax-based Prismacolor pencils (though there are other brands of wax-based pencils that you can try to see what works best for you); they stay put when you add watercolor on top, without lifting or muddying the washes, and they don’t smear as you draw. Unfortunately, in my experience, the newer oil-based colored pencils tend to smudge if you inadvertently rub your hand over them, and they may lift when wet. They just don’t work as well with watercolor.

Painting over a colored pencil sketch is a great technique for working fast—you can keep the basic sketch bold and simple, and add only as much color as you need. A fast, loose sketch like this still provides plenty of framework for your washes.

I often use a dark gray wax-based colored pencil when working on the spot. Then when I return home, I add watercolor washes over the sketch. I find this helps me train my color memory—it also lightens the load I carry with me to the field! Any dark colored pencil will work well with this technique though. Try Indigo, Dark Umber, Tuscan Red, Black Grape or any strong, rich color; they will add a beautifully subtle vibration to your work. (Of course, you can go wild and use a bright red or blue, too!)

Choose a different hue for your basic colored pencil drawing to emphasize the mood you’re after—here I was tired and a bit contemplative, so I used an Indigo colored pencil for the basic sketch, then added quick washes. As when you do the preliminary sketch with graphite pencil, this underdrawing gives you a framework to hang loose watercolor washes on—I like the freshness of this approach.

Although not my favorite method of working, some artists use colored pencils to add spark or details to their finished paintings, or to correct areas that have become dull, to avoid the danger of making the painting muddy with too many overwashes.

There are times when a painting just isn’t satisfying—especially, it seems to me, when dealing with the many challenges of working in the field. Nature can be confusing, and I often find myself trying to include too much; my painting gets away from me. Rather than rip it up and throw it away, it’s worth playing with, using my colored pencils.

In this detail of a larger piece, I added a bit of sparkle in the form of highlights on the water and rocks, to what had become a rather muddy, uninteresting painting.

You may prefer to plan ahead for such an effect; it doesn’t have to be a last-ditch afterthought! And these mixed-media paintings are receiving increasing acceptance at shows; they have their own special energy.

Here I experimented with several different colored pencils, using various colors and values against a variegated wash.

Water-soluble pencils allow the artist to work in watercolor without the necessity of toting tubes, large palettes, and water containers into the field. These pencils are watercolor pigment and binders in pencil or crayon form—just add water!

Just like with regular watercolors, some pigments are more lightfast than others. A good brand will rate their pencils, allowing you to choose. Some of the new, exciting types of watercolor pencils have some serious issues with fading. Check online for research on what brands or colors tend to fade most, or do your own tests.

I did this painting in 2005 with Derwent Graphitints (which are a mixture of watercolor pigment and graphite), and so far it’s resisted fading very well.

Get acquainted with the effects of each pencil (some become almost garish when wet). Try an open-stock pencil from several different brands and work with each to see how they stroke on color and look when wet. I prefer Faber-Castell’s Albrecht Dürer watercolor pencils—they’re buttery soft and richly pigmented. You may like a harder pencil, though, so shop around. Purchasing a few open-stock pencils will let you experiment before making a decision, without too much of an investment.

The paper you choose is particularly important with watercolor pencils—can make all the difference between whether you love or hate them!

Choose paper with a hard, well-sized surface, like Strathmore Imperial, and you’ll be able to deposit more pigment and dissolve it with your brush without damaging the paper surface. Some artists prefer to use a hot-pressed paper with watercolor pencils as it is easier to control your pencil lines on a paper without a lot of texture.

I enjoy sketching with watercolor pencils, but you can also use them to create entire paintings. Many artists like these pencils for the greater control they offer, whether for whole paintings or just a strong sharp detail here and there.

The scene was carefully drawn in non-water-soluble black ink, and the color was added later, with watercolor pencil.

When painting with watercolor pencils, you put down color, wet, allow it to dry, then add another layer of color—just as you do with regular watercolor washes. Here a quick ink sketch with muted watercolor pencil primaries let me cut supplies to the bone while still allowing for a satisfying range of colors.

Take a single watercolor pencil to sketch with in the field, and add washes either there on the spot or later, when you return to the studio—the effect can be subtle or bold, depending on the colors you choose!

I drew these buildings as mostly outlines, with just a bit of interior work, then painted clear-water washes over the shapes to blend the colors. The swatches on the right are where I tested the colors I planned to use to make sure they’d give the effect I wanted.

We had gone for a drive in the country on a cool, cloudy summer day, and I found a small lake in a nearby town. My journal sketch was hampered by the rain that began to fall moments after we arrived (you can see the pattern of droplets on the page below), but it was inspiring enough that I wanted to try this scene again under more favorable circumstances. I decided on mixed media, watercolor and watercolor pencil for this demo.

Pigments

Watercolors: Burnt Sienna, Cobalt Blue, Phthalo Blue, Quinacridone Gold, Ultramarine Blue

Watercolor Pencils: Blue Gray (Derwent), Burnt Sienna (Albrecht Dürer), Green Gold (Albrecht Dürer), Prussian Blue (Albrecht Dürer)

Brushes

¾-inch (19mm) flat

no. 4 round

Small, stiff nylon brush

Surface

140-lb. (300gsm) cold-pressed watercolor paper

Other

Tissues or paper towels

Watercolor is a good choice for areas where you want smoother transitions and broader effects. Paint Burnt Sienna, Ultramarine Blue and Cobalt Blue wet-in-wet with a ¾-inch (19mm) flat brush in the sky and reflected lake area.

When that is dry, use a small, stiff nylon brush to lift out the falling rain—be sure to lift loosened color quickly with a tissue or paper towel.

A simple wash of Phthalo Blue mixed with Quinacridone Gold makes a wonderful green for the grassy areas. Apply the green watercolor with the ¾-inch (19mm) flat—larger brushes help create smoother effects than dabbing away with a small one!

Watercolor pencils are lovely for adding smaller details. Derwent makes a beautiful Blue Gray that may turn out to be essential in your kit—it is in mine! Adding squiggles of this color where the trees will be puts down a cool layer that will suggest distant trees on a rainy day. Give closer foliage along the bank a layer of Green Gold or a similar color.

Wet the watercolor pencil areas with your no. 4 round brush for greatest control and let them dry. Then add more squiggles where the larger trees will be. These can be more energetic since you’ll want them to have a bit more detail.

Wet the trees using the same small brush. A slightly scrubbing motion will mix your watercolor pencil pigment right on the paper. Light touches of Burnt Sienna watercolor pencil along the bank and under the trees on the far shore warm things up a bit. Blend these with clear water as well; blot if you like, here and there, for a bit of variation.

You can lift color directly from the pencil tip with a damp brush for details like these cattails on the near shore, or shave off bits of the color into a small palette. Here, the Blue Gray and Green Gold pencils made a nice rich green, with a touch of Prussian Blue added. Mix with water to achieve the color you’re after, and paint it on with a no. 4 round brush. A bit more Burnt Sienna along the edge of the lake and in the cattail heads provides unity.

These are like watercolor pencils, but not encased in wood. While some of the pencils are also all pigment with no wood, they’re still reasonably firm, whereas crayons feel waxy or oily. They’re softer than pencils and tend to lift with water more readily, often with intense or brilliant effects. Explore a bit to see which ones you like best.

Test-drive watercolor crayons to make sure they perform in a way that meets your needs. Try making a bold scribble on your paper, then pull it out with a brush and clear water to see how it mixes, flows and thins. Some brands and types dissolve much more readily than others. Here are two of my favorites, Neocolor crayons (left) and a couple of samples of Lyra Aquacolors (right).

Some of the crayons spread like crazy, almost exploding across your page! I was surprised at the vibrant effects in this sketch of my old cat, Oliver. I used the crayons in a very sketchy way, laying down a loose drawing and then wetting and blending. Play with your crayons under a variety of circumstances to learn what to expect.

Refreshing Your Crayon’s “Liftability”

If you’re lifting color directly from the tip of the crayon with a damp brush instead of drawing on paper and then blending, you may find that you’re not getting enough color. Your crayons may have gotten hard with age or temperature changes. Simply scribble color onto a piece of rough or cold-pressed paper to refresh the “liftability” of the crayon.

That bit of color is not wasted—you can use the scribbled color as if it was a pan of paint on your palette. Some artists make lightweight “portable palettes” this way on purpose for travel.

Ballpoint pens are almost universally available. More than once I’ve found myself wanting to sketch but with no official “art supplies” with me. Someone is always willing to lend me a ballpoint pen, though, and I’ve done some of my favorite sketches with these ubiquitous tools. You can get some very subtle effects, from bold lines to soft halftones, and with watercolor washes, the effects can be lovely.

You can do as much or as little detail as you want with your pen; I enjoy both quick sketches and more complete studies, like this one.

I usually keep washes simple, with very little detail beyond the drawing itself. Here I used permanent black ink, so there was no lifting as I added washes. I blotted my wet washes here and there to add contour and texture.

Sometimes red or blue can provide an interesting vibration—if that’s all that’s available, don’t let it keep you from sketching!

Tips for Using Ballpoint Pens

• Test your pen line with clear water to find out if it is water soluble. Even if it isn’t, using it with watercolor can produce lively, unexpected effects.

• Make sure the pen starts smoothly without blobbing or skipping, or otherwise making for a frustrating sketching process.

• Be aware that many ballpoint inks will fade over time.

• Try using colors other than black for different effects. I use brown ink when I want an aged, subtle effect.

Another ubiquitous tool you may not have thought of using with watercolor is the fiber-tip pen (we used to call them felt-tips). These tools can be quite unpredictable when paired with watercolor—and fun! Of course, the lines are perfectly well-behaved if you draw over dry washes, but why not see what will happen when you use it wet?

I did this quick sketch with the only tool I had available—a blue water-soluble fiber-tip pen. Later I added a touch of color with a watercolor wash and let the pen lines soften and blend to create a range of values.

When I used a brush to apply clear water to my lines on the right, they tended to run uncontrollably, sometimes almost washing away. On the left, I lightly sprayed clear water on the lines. I then sprayed water heavily on the right for a nice washy effect.

You don’t even have to use water-soluble fiber-tip pens with watercolor—you can use them alone. Simply draw on your paper, using as many colors of ink as you like, then wet with clear water. (Bear in mind that many of these pens are not lightfast and may fade in time.)

In this sketch of a fallen tree, I tried Pilot Razor Point fiber-tip pens on hot-pressed paper. The lines tended to stay put, only softening when wet with warm brown watercolor washes. Using these pens is handy and effective for on-the-spot sketching or studio works. They are available in black and a variety of colors.

I use these pens often whether drawing people, animals or architecture. They’re terrific for landscape as well; draw as much or as little detail as you like, then lay in your watercolor washes for beautiful effects. Micron Pigma, Zig Millennium and Staedler Pigment Liners are all good choices.

Sketching with ink and adding color later can be a very fast way to capture the moment. Here, the ink lines are really relatively simple, and so are the washes, but together they captured the feeling of my little cat, Scout.

Here, the Burnt Sienna ink in my technical pen feels like a warm summer day. The lines provided just enough framework to encourage and allow loose, fresh washes of watercolor.

I drew this sweep of mountains using simple line work with a permanent pen and then added watercolor washes to define the rugged shapes.

Things to Know About Permanent Pens and Markers

• Permanent markers are water-insoluble.

• Some permanent pens are rather smelly and may change color with time. Look for archival, neutral pH information when you want your work to last.

• Permanent pens come in an array of colors. Black is still gorgeous with washes applied, but you can get 64-color sets if you want.

• Technical pens can be purchased in the traditional Rapidograph style where you fill it with color on your own, or you can buy them prefilled and disposable to avoid the mess and cleanup.

Gel pens are relatively new to the market, but they can be lots of fun for sketching. They come in a wide variety of colors, including metallics. Look for acid-free, archival pens. Some are smear-resistant, some are not; test yours or enjoy the tendency to lift.

My current favorite is the white Uni-ball Signo gel pen, good for adding sharp details or crisp white lines on toned paper or dark watercolor washes—it’s a linear effect I’ve not been able to get any other way. I often use gel pens for highlights in an eye, cat whiskers and similar details.

Here I added white gel pen lines on top of an opaque watercolor sketch of a cauli-flower. The pen work is very lacy and linear, and helps capture some of the complexity of the vegetable.

You may prefer more subtle effects with the gel pen. Here I used a white gel pen to detail fur in the ears and for the whiskers of the cat.

You can sketch with colored gel pens, just as you would with a technical or ballpoint pen. This little gargoyle is done with a burgundy metallic pen, so I decided to use iridescent medium in my watercolor washes to give him a magical shimmer.

Bamboo pens are inexpensive, fun and interesting; they can be very versatile. Actually, about any kind of dip pen works well with watercolor—think of some of Rembrandt’s or Da Vinci’s sketches. A bamboo pen is relatively inflexible; the ink or watercolor lines become narrower and fainter as the pen runs out of fluid, making it perfect for a number of naturalistic applications. I enjoy the variable line when painting florals; you may find the strong linear effects handy in any number of ways. These pens are also great for applying liquid mask.

These pens are great for applying liquid mask either before painting or into a damp wash. At left, I mostly applied the liquid mask before adding color—those are the clean, crisp light lines. Once it dried, I added color and while that was still damp I touched the nib of the pen with mask on it to the surface to make the roundish white shapes. In the Phthalo Blue sample at right, I drew into the wet wash with liquid mask on the pen and touched the nib to the paper to make the roundish shapes.

This quick sketch of an iris was done with liquid dye watercolors and a small bamboo pen. I then added loose washes using regular tube watercolors and a brush.

You can use the pen itself to “paint” with and leave out washes altogether. This can be especially effective if you change colors of ink or liquid watercolor to do each design element. If you prefer regular tube watercolors, mix a juicy wash in a small container deep enough to dip into, or load your pen from a rich wash of color loaded into a fat, round watercolor brush.

I painted this bright sunfish with liquid watercolors, then used a bamboo pen for the lines in the tail and fins. (You can see the bubbly effect of rubbing alcohol in the boldly colored water.)

Brush pens have the color or ink right in the barrel of the pen. They’re extremely convenient for sketching or travel. Some have nylon hairs while others are fiber-tips that are shaped like a brush. I find the hair type more pleasing for the way I work. Some are black ink and take a cartridge, others are full color—you can buy primary sets, landscape sets, or huge sets with all the colors you’d ever want! And you can even find some that are permanent.

You can find brush pens made for kids in your discount store, and artist-quality pens in your art supply store. Here I’m using Elmer’s pens, and they’re FUN. Everyone from Lyra to Faber-Castell to Crayola seems to make these now; read the label to find out about lightfastness, if that’s an issue. The color may be too saturated for you, but you can still thin with water or mix them, as I have here, by pulling out the color with a wet brush.

Brush pens make interesting, varied lines, whether you choose the hair or the fiber-tip option. Like regular fiber-tip pens, the ink used in some of these brushes is highly unpredictable when wet, unless you’ve chosen the permanent type. The flexible tip of this tool makes marks like those possible with a round watercolor brush. Here I used a black Sakura Pigma Brush Pen, one of the fiber type, and allowed the ink to dry before adding watercolor.

Palette knives are not made just for oils or acrylics; I use mine almost exclusively for watercolor techniques. Buy one with a good flexible tip, slightly rounded as shown below; you’ll find this is a very useful tool to apply your watercolors.

A Paint will flow off the tip of your palette knife in much the same way as it did off the bamboo pen, with somewhat finer and sometimes more controllable results. As you paint, the lines become thinner, making this a very useful technique to suggest the diminishing diameter of twigs or grasses.

B Use the knife in a manner similar to that used in oil painting—use the flat of the blade to “scumble” paint onto your paper’s surface. This suggests the texture of distant grasses, or perhaps evergreen foliage.

C Use a palette knife if you need to apply thin lines of liquid masking fluid or super-thin lines of paint.

Preparing Your Palette Knife for Painting

The metal on a palette knife generally comes with a thin lacquer coating to protect it from rust or abrasion. Before watercolor will adhere to the blade, this coating will have to be removed.

Sand it off using a very fine sandpaper or use lacquer remover, or hold the blade in an open flame for a few moments to burn it down to bare metal. Now you’re ready to paint!

If you travel a lot, you may find plastic palette knives avoid problems with airport security. Sand the blades with very fine sandpaper to encourage them to accept watercolor. (Of course, if you’re using a plastic palette knife, you’ll definitely want to skip the open flame and the lacquer thinner!)

Of course, you don’t have to have official brushes, pencils or pens in order to make art. Some of my favorite tools have been the result of those lightbulb-over-the-head moments when you suddenly think, “I wonder how THAT would work?” One that’s stayed with me for years is simply a sharp stick. You can paint with it, draw with it as if it were an ink pen and scratch lines into a damp wash—it’s a handy (and often free) tool.

Look around you. That tree or bush nearby might have a good painting tool growing on it. Break or sharpen a dowel rod—or several of them, in different diameters. Check the grocery store; I have two sizes of bamboo skewers in my art kit that make wonderful tools. The bamboo seems to be just porous enough that it holds paint, especially if you soak it in your paint water for a bit. And they come in a package of one hundred for very little money!

Here I combined brushwork with a large no. 8 round watercolor brush and line work with the bamboo skewers. You can use sharpened sticks to apply liquid mask (at left), drag out limbs and trunks (as in the little evergreen tree) or just draw with them. The bit of red in the lower right was done with a broken-off skewer; the way bamboo grows makes it leave long fibrous strings when you break it. It’s almost like a very rough brush.

This is my favorite m02

8" (10mm) dowel rod, sharpened on one end in the pencil sharpener and on the other to a nib-like shape with a pocketknife. It’s wonderfully versatile!

Here are a few of the effects I’ve used my dowel rod tool for. The spiraled squares show how much color it can hold before it runs out. Try it for yourself; make a variety of marks and experiment with how you might use them.

There’s something appropriate about painting sticks and small limbs using a sharpened stick. I mixed a strong wash of Indigo and Burnt Sienna for the limbs silhouetted darkly against the lake and used the sharp stick to draw them. The paint feeds off the tip and becomes lighter and more delicate, just like a twig or branch.

These tools, as their name implies, are meant to be used with scratchboard, that clay-coated board we experimented. However, they can also be used on watercolor paper of any weight to scratch through washes. There are a lot of ways of regaining lost whites when painting with watercolor, and scratchboard tools are one of my favorite ways to get those small or narrow whites back. If you work into a wet wash, you will incise darker lines where you have bruised the paper fibers, as you can with sharp sticks or pencil points, but if you wait until the wash is dry, you can get nice, linear, light-struck effects with these tools.

There are two types of scratch-board tools, which give slightly different effects. One is a small, pointed tool with a flat blade. Its effects are more jagged and spotty since that sharp point bites into the paper. The other is a rounded, spoon-shaped tool that makes softer effects, thanks to its rounded tip. You can make rather delicate, controlled marks with this tool—try it out and see how versatile it is!

I did this painting at an art crawl; I didn’t have a lot of time and the lighting was poor, but I was happy with it overall. I realized after getting home that although the trees at the top of the hill on the left looked fine with their drybrush handling, those on the right looked altogether too solid.

I recovered the whites with my spoon-shaped scratchboard tool. Since everything was fully dry, it was easy to scratch through the paint to achieve just the right amount of laciness in the trees.

I did a bit more scratching in the foreground and added some spatter to the road and foreground, and called it done!

I use my craft knife for more than cutting paper and matboard; it is a handy tool for regaining whites in a watercolor. It can be used like the sharp scratchboard tool or in more controlled ways, to cut and lift away the top layer of your paper for a perfectly white area. It is difficult to paint on this white, though, since it is rougher and more absorbent than the original surface.

On the left, I made scratches through a lavender wash with a sharp craft knife. On the right, I’ve used the point of a very sharp craft knife to cut through the top layer of my paper to recapture the pure whites of the sail and the window. This underlayer will have a rougher surface than the original, but if you burnish it a bit with the flat of your fingernail or a burnishing tool, it will become a little easier to paint on.

A bit of judicious trimming with the craft knife and peeling away the top surface of the paper let me bring this sketch closer to a correct perspective! Adding a few stronger darks here and there helped the effort along and also made the cat a bit more believable.

Knives of all sorts are handy in creating a variety of textural effects. The blunt edge of a butter knife works well to lift or push pigment as our other tools did, but you can also create a number of incised effects by bruising the paper fibers with a knife.

A These marks are made by a widely serrated plastic knife of the sort you’d find at a picnic dinner. I keep one handy in my daypack.

B These finely spaced lines are the result of dragging a finely serrated steak knife through a wet wash. It’s a bit too regular to use for naturalistic effects, but it would be very useful in a more abstract situation.

C I’ve roughly pulled the tip of a rounded butter knife through my wet wash here. The pressure was great enough to push the paint in the middle of the stroke out of the way while bruising a darker area along the sides.

Here I’ve created a variety of wood effects by simply incising with a variety of knives (and a fork) while the wash was wet.

Also known as “color shapers,” these tools are relatively new and come in a variety of shapes intended for all kinds of uses. Some are very soft while others are stiffer (the stiff ones work best as a scraper tool). Some have a modeling nib on one end and a brush on the other. Some are rather expensive and others quite affordable, almost giveaways. Some are advertised for kids (that would be you and me, if we’re “young at art”!) and are said to be a good bridge between finger painting and brushes. They’re usually meant for oils or acrylics, but pastel painters like them for blending...and who says we can’t find a use for them with watercolor? I did! Try them and see how you like them.

I let my wash begin to lose its shine, then scraped through with a soft color shaper (left) and a firmer one (right). You can see there is a big difference between the two effects, so choose the scraper that fits your needs!

On the top, I tried painting directly with one of the firm color shapers; it was pretty versatile. On the bottom I used it to apply liquid mask using a variety of strokes—it worked well and was extremely easy to clean the mask off—just wait till the mask is dry and rub it off!

There are times when you don’t want to scrape all the way back to white; you just want to create a texture or suggest a lighter area. The trick to using scraping or lifting tools is in the timing. If you scrape when the wash is wet, you will be able to make areas darker than your body wash, since you’ll be bruising the paper’s surface. By waiting until your wash begins to lose its wet shine, you’ll be able to push the pigment out of the way to make lighter areas. Depending on the tool you choose, these areas can be as small and narrow as the stem of a weed, or as broad as a granite boulder. I have seen whole buildings suggested with a single stroke of a lifting tool.

I scraped this building out of the dark background while it was still damp, using the shorter edge of a cut-up credit card.

These effects can be valuable when suggesting the texture of fur, grasses, rocks, buildings in the distance, or simply lighter forms. Try using a single-edged razor blade as a scraper too—just be careful of the sharp edge!

I cut my old credit card into an irregular shape of various widths to use for lifting and scraping.

Batik artists have known for centuries that wax repels waterborne dyes—why not use that knowledge as watercolorists? In the section on Liquid Aids (see Melted Wax) I covered a more truly batik-like technique; here I’ll explore ways to use the dry form. A block of paraffin, a tiny birthday candle, a child’s wax crayon—these all make great masking agents and can be used instead of traditional masking agents to retain whites in your painting. You can even purchase a wax resist in crayon form.

Since wax resists further washes, be sure to apply it only when you are sure you want the effect, either before painting to maintain a white, or at any stage in between to protect the color of an underwash.

Try a variety of strokes coupled with a strong, boldly colored overwash—you’ll find wax really makes those whites pop. Old candles are useful for creating fine lines. A block of paraffin can give you as bold and broad a light as you could wish. You can get more delicate effects using the broken edge of a paraffin block or a well-sharpened white crayon.

I put down the white trees and branches on my paper first (the broad trunk with the side of a candle and bark scars with the sharper edge). Then I flooded in a warm golden wash and let it dry, adding a swipe of cool shadow down the side of my big trunk.

Next I added more branches and leaf shapes over the gold with another layer of wax and added a darker, warmer wash. This technique would be good to use on a finished painting—just remember, you won’t be able to make any dark lines stick over the wax lines and shapes, so plan carefully.

Here the edge of the candle was used in a linear motion; obviously I was thinking of a placid lake glittering in sunlight. Washing on Permanent Alizarin Crimson and Phthalo Blue played up the placid-lake effect.

You might use a candle to retain lights on a rain-slick street, the shine of a young girl’s hair or highlights on foliage; try it with rich darks or warm colors.

A box of kids’ crayons are a delight to combine with watercolor effects. Use them to suggest graffiti, to capture the effect of light-struck leaves or as a design element in mixed media techniques (you may have difficulty entering such a piece in a pure watermedia show, but don’t let that stop you from experimenting and enjoying it).

Here, I’ve applied a variety of light to medium value crayon colors on top of a variegated watercolor wash. Notice how the crayons stand out; some even seem to fluoresce. On the flower I’ve used a single color as an outline strictly as a design element; I know of no flower in nature that looks like this, but the contrast is irresistible. For the leaf form on the right I used more naturalistic handling, with yellow crayon as the outline and veining, and watercolor washes on top.

Graffiti is fun with white or colored crayons; if you use a color, just be sure you choose a color that will show up against your overwash. I played it safe here with white crayon under my Burnt Sienna and Ultramarine Blue, but yellow, orange, red and light blue crayon would also work well. I once did a painting of an old doorway in the city (well-marked with the sentiments of the neighborhood teenagers) using crayon-resist graffiti (I cleaned up the wording a bit, though).

This doll’s clothing was made of flowered flannel, and rather than have to paint around the white flowers or use a mask that would have to be removed later, I opted to try making the flowers with a white crayon, leaving a spot in the center of each for that blue middle. Then I could apply the overall base color washes much more freely, though I waited to apply the other colors when the jumpsuit was dry.

Here you’ll paint a landscape using crayons as both a resist and a design element in the painting. An autumn day in Nevada was my inspiration for this painting; the leaves were like sunlight made solid. The waxy crayon will resist watercolor washes, giving this scene all-around sparkle!

Pigments

Burnt Sienna

Phthalo Blue

Quinacridone Burnt Scarlet

Brushes

¾-inch (19mm) flat

no. 6 round

Surface

140-lb. (300gsm) cold-pressed watercolor paper

Crayons

Gray

Light Gray

Light Green

Light Orange

Yellow

Yellow-Green

Yellow-Orange

White

Draw in the trunks and a few of the branches with a white crayon (which of course doesn’t show here on white paper). Then add light touches of light gray for the trunks’ shadowed areas.

Apply dots and dashes for the foliage using a variety of yellow, yellow-green, light green and light orange crayons.

Continue to add yellow and yellow-orange colors to the foliage, and use a light gray to help give the trunks volume.

Since the foliage and trunks were done in crayon and crayon works as a resist, you are free to splash in the background forest without worrying about covering up the light-colored details.

Splash in shades of Phthalo Blue mixed with varied amounts of Burnt Sienna and Quinacridone Burnt Scarlet for rich greens; the ¾-inch (19mm) flat works well here. Spatter and scrape here and there to add texture that suggests the high mountain forest. A few limbs can be added with a rich mixture of darks and the no. 6 round.

These are fat crayonlike wax pencils wrapped in paper—you “sharpen” them by pulling away a long spiral of the paper. They’re said to write on just about anything, with their waxy makeup; and one other thing they do fairly well is work as a handy, portable resist. For a resist, you’ll want to use a white china marker—they come in white, black and red. The pressure you apply and the surface of your paper may make some difference in how much of a resist you actually achieve. You may see more effect on a smoother, hot-pressed paper.

In this quick sketch, a squiggle of white china marker protected the stormy-looking clouds over the soybean field. On the hot-pressed paper, the lines of the marker stand out against the dark sky.

Here I drew the surf carefully and slowly before painting. You can see the effect in the lines of breakers heading for the shore. When the initial wash was dry, I added more white china marker on top to capture the effect of seafoam.

Pastels or soft chalks can be used as a resist or design element in your paintings for a mixed media effect. They will somewhat resist washes of paint and also can be applied on top of color for a vibrant effect.

Adding pastel or soft chalk lines after you have painted gives a look similar to that of using crayons.

This creates a fascinating, linear effect, useful for an all-over design. Or use these tools in more realistic ways. One artist I know uses chalk lines as lively outlines that can give an especially vibrant feeling to her watercolors.

Here I did a somewhat abstract floral with watercolor washes, then added chalk lines for spark; think how this effect might be used when painting landscapes or people. It is more difficult to control the larger pastels or soft chalks though—you may prefer to use pastel pencils. Of course you will need to use a fixative spray or frame your work to protect the delicate pastel work.

You can use chalk as a resist, as Winslow Homer and other early watercolorists did. Crush a piece of white chalk to powder (a mortar and pestle works fine) and mix with water, then paint it onto your watercolor paper where you want to protect the paper. Let it dry thoroughly and paint over it using a light stroke, then let your wash dry as well. Curl your paper once you’ve removed it from the support to pop loose the chalk, or dust it off with your fingertip or a stiff brush, then continue to paint.

Here I painted white chalk cloud shapes on the paper. When it dried, I painted over this with Cobalt Blue at the top and Phthalo Blue at the bottom to show how well this technique works for skies. It doesn’t work like liquid mask, but it has a charm all its own!

Erasers are good for more than obliterating mistakes when you are writing or drawing. You can use them to lift washes to reestablish whites. If you are careful and use a fine eraser, you can even paint back over the area you have lifted. One artist I know erases back an arc in his skies, then draws or paints in a soft rainbow when everything is dry; it’s a nice, subtle way to handle what often becomes a garish mistake.

There are all kinds, types and sizes of erasers—check out your office supply store as well as the art supply store. I have an invaluable old electric eraser that will lift back to white paper, if needed. (Of course it was rather expensive, and if I didn’t also do a number of pen and ink illustrations, I might not have invested in this tool.)

In this painting, I used a stencil I cut myself from flexible plastic sheet to erase and lift out the quarter moon in the background of this little, slightly surrealistic painting.

I laid down a wash of staining Permanent Alizarin Crimson plus two sedimenting colors, Ultramarine Blue and Burnt Umber, and allowed them to dry thoroughly then practiced lifting color with different erasers.

A An ordinary pink eraser on the end of a pencil is a bit rough on watercolor paper, but it does manage the lift.

B A soft vinyl eraser has almost no effect, although it might eventually lift a bit more if you go at it for a while. It might be useful for modeling subtle areas.

C A white eraser in pencil form is less effective than a pink eraser, but is easier on the paper.

D An electric eraser and eraser shield make it easy to lift almost back down to white paper.

E An ink eraser is very effective at removing pigment, even the staining color, but it is hard on the paper.

Sponges are extremely handy for watercolorists and have more uses than could ever be covered here. One of the handiest is to use the sponge as a lifter. Whether lifting a mistake or intentionally bringing back the white of the paper in your painting, natural and synthetic sponges are your friends.

Sometimes a painting just doesn’t get it for you. This one was done on the spot on a rather colorless day, and when I finished, I realized that about all I actually liked was the waterfall. I let it rest for a while before deciding what to do with it (besides consigning it to the circular file, that is).

Since I had nothing to lose and basically was pleased with only the center section, I decided to re-wet the outside edges and use my soft manmade sponge to turn the painting into a vignette. Ah ha, improvement! So I used a small sponge to soften and lift areas on the rocks and the spray from the waterfall, and flooded in a few touches of livelier color. A bit more sponge work, painting directly with a natural sponge this time in the distant foliage, and I was much happier with the completed painting!

To lift a controlled shape from your painting, try cutting a stencil from heavy, coated paper like a postcard, card stock or thin plastic. Use a damp sponge and rub lightly over your paper. Blot to remove loosened pigment. When you remove the stencil, be sure to gently blot up the water that managed to work its way under the edge, too. Then when everything is dry, you can go back in and paint whatever you want in the clean spot!

Common Uses for Sponges

• Use them to uniformly wet your paper before beginning a wet-in-wet passage.

• Use them to wet the back of a watercolor board that has begun to warp.

• Keep one handy by your palette to adjust the amount of paint or water on your brush; a sponge will soak up the excess instantly, allowing you to get perfect dry-brush effects.

• One quick swipe of a sponge will clean your palette so you have an unsullied mixing area.

• Use sponges to pick up spilled paint on your floor, your table—or your painting.

• Adjust painted areas that have become overworked with a soft sponge and clean water, then blot with a tissue.

• Use them to paint but beware—painting with a sponge is easily overdone, and when the results are too uniform and predictable, it can be disastrous.

The effects of lifting with a sponge or eraser can be understated or bold. For this painting demonstration, I wanted everything to work together to capture a feeling of peace and space, so I kept things very subtle throughout.

Pigments

Burnt Sienna

Cadmium Orange

Quinacridone Red

Ultramarine Blue

Brushes

½-inch (12mm) and 1-inch (25mm) flats

no. 8 round

Surface

140-lb. (300gsm) cold-pressed watercolor paper

Other

Natural or manmade sponge

Sketch in the shape of the mountains, then lay in wet-in-wet washes of Ultramarine Blue mixed with Burnt Sienna to suggest the clouds, painting right down over the distant peaks with your 1-inch (25mm) flat. Use Cadmium Orange and Quinacridone Red in the warm areas of the mountaintops. Let dry.

Add a light wash of Ultramarine Blue and Burnt Sienna from the distant mountains right to the bottom of the page. I wanted the mountains on the left to look as though the clouds partly obscured them, so I softened that edge while it was still wet, using clear water on a round brush. Before the wash dries completely, lift the lighter orange spot in the far mountain pass with a damp sponge to show where the last light of the day struck the mountain. Let dry.

Add two progressively darker glazes to the mountains with the same colors as in step 2, letting each glaze dry before adding the next. Paint quickly and lightly so you don’t disturb the underwash. Let dry. Don’t worry about the hard edges or any “flowers” that form at the bottom because these will be covered with subsequent washes. The ½-inch (12mm) flat offers control and crisp edges.

Paint still darker glazes over the layers of the mountains. As the washes lose their shine, drop in clear water with a round brush and a bit of Cadmium Orange and Burnt Sienna mixed in. Work fast! The wetter wash of warm color will push back the cool, sedimenting wash and suggest lighter trees.

Go even darker on the foreground mountain, dropping the watered-down mix into this area too, as well as scratching, scraping and using your fingertips to pat into the damp wash to suggest those thickly forested slopes.

Use a manmade or natural sponge and clear water to soften the edges of some of the clouds, lifting a bit more light in the upper sky, and suggesting a cloud obscuring the mountain on the right. Blot quickly, but don’t scrub hard enough to lift back to a truly light value—just enough for softness and subtlety.

Natural sponges are best for most paint applications. Twist and turn your sponge and use different areas of its surface to get more interesting, varied effects. Look for the raggediest sponge you can find; a hardware, discount or auto parts store may be a good place to look.

B Make foliage or a lichen-like effect by jabbing the sponge on your paper while continually turning the sponge to expose a new surface. Try for color variation when you use this technique; dip or dot your sponge into several colors or values. You may even want to paint directly onto the sponge or dip it into the mound of paint on your palette.

C It’s easy to fall in love with the loose, free effects of a big natural sponge.

The effectiveness of a ragged bit of natural sponge is easy to see here in the tree at the right. Practice dabbing and light, lifting strokes to see what kind of marks you can make.

I carry a small scrap of natural sponge in my field kit—I find it very handy for suggesting foliage when painting en plein air. I painted this scene from a canoe in the middle of a lake!

Synthetic sponges can be useful to paint with, too. Some come with a regular texture on one side that can be used for stamping or try painting with an edge. Some synthetic sponges have a “pot scrubber” side; this will make interesting textural effects if used in moderation.

A Use a wet synthetic sponge to remove paint back to the white paper (unless you are trying to remove a staining color as I have here) or to change or modify an area that is too strong, too busy or overworked. Load your sponge with clean water, scrub out color and blot often with a tissue or paper towel.

B Use the sponge to stamp over preliminary washes for abstract texture. Some sponges have regular or even bricklike surfaces that create great textures.

C Use the smaller edges of sponges as stamping tools. This one had a nice large-holed texture.

D This sponge had a pot-scrubber surface on one side—I picked up Permanent Alizarin Crimson with it to deposit over my paper’s surface.

Manmade sponges come with a variety of surface textures: some resemble brickwork, with a linear configuration, while others are more versatile.

Here I used a sponge with a texture of random holes that worked well to suggest both foliage and rough old stonework.

Your own fingers and fingernails can make handy painting and scraping tools to incise dark lines into a damp wash, push pigment out of the way for a lighter line, or pat a pattern into the paint. (I’m assuming you don’t mind getting dirty to get the effect you want!)

You can make interesting textures using your hands, too—remember fingerpaint-ing? Here, it’s all grown up.

Try out silly, funny shapes just for the fun of it. Your fingers can be quite wet with paint or almost dry (that gave me the effect of the bare winter tree’s twigs and small branches; all I had to do was suggest the connecting limbs).

The use of stencils with watercolor is a bit like stamping—anything goes, and you can create an amazing variety of effects, as uniformly or as loosely as you choose. Stencils may be bought commercially or you may make your own from tag board, cover stock, plastic sheets and even thin sheet brass. Many office supply stores carry interesting letter or number stencils that work well with an abstract concept.

I’ve used a number of stencils and nonstencils here as idea starters. Some are authentic Victorian stencils while others are office-supply store letters meant to label mailboxes, and on the left, I’ve even used an eraser shield as a stencil. Oddly enough, I found that paint applied with a stencil brush didn’t work as well as that applied with a soft watercolor brush.

For a less mannered or informal effect, try tearing a loose stencil from paper and using it to protect areas of your work you don’t want painted, then either sponging or spattering paint through the hole. I’ve even used my hand for a “stencil” or mask in this way, protecting the paper where I don’t want the spatter to go; those fingers are always handy, and I’ll wash. Here, by using a stencil as a shield, I was able to spatter on foliage for this tree while still retaining a white background.

Some sort of spray bottle should be a part of your permanent tool kit. They come in all shapes and sizes and degrees of portability. Try an empty household-cleaner bottle (well washed) or an industrial sprayer with a trigger handle that makes a nice, fine spray. My favorite is a tiny travel atomizer that will perform just about all the same tricks as a larger spray bottle, but is much more portable—beauty stores have small spray bottles too. Look around your studio, kitchen or bathroom; I’ll wager you’ll find something close to home!

I allowed the blue and green wash to lose its shine, then hit it with droplets of water from a spray bottle.

I loaded my spray bottle with a pale Permanent Alizarin Crimson wash and gave it a spray. It’s a bit less delicate than the effects you can get with an airbrush (all right, a lot less delicate) but it could be handy, and it’s a lot less expensive as well.

While this red wash was still quite wet, I sprayed the lower edge with a couple of shots of clean water. The pigment bled down into a new shape and made interesting lacy edges—it would make a nice bit of foliage if it were green.

I sprayed the wet red wash again and blotted quickly in the center—this made a dramatic change in value.

I then dropped two identical drops of red paint beside my big red swatch in the small circles. I just blotted the top one with a damp tissue, but on the lower one, I sprayed the droplet first with clean water, then blotted to lift—it came very nearly clean. I once saw artist Jim Hamil save a painting in just this way—it’s too good a tip not to pass it on.

Nifty Uses for Your Spray Bottle

• Re-wet moist pan pigments or mounds of color that have dried on your palette.

• Dampen your paper for a wet-in-wet effect before painting. Just hit your paper all over with a clear-water spray, then spread the water lightly with a brush.

• You can also fix mistakes, or keep an area damp that threatens to dry too soon.

• Straighten out a warping watercolor board. If your watercolor board begins to warp, making your washes threaten to run off at the sides, get out your sprayer and spray the back of the board with clean water; it’ll straighten right up, since the back side will stretch to counteract the curve of the front.

An old-fashioned device, the fixative sprayer is much less expensive than an airbrush, and if you don’t plan to use it often, it may be just the trick to spray paint onto your surface. If you are windy enough, the force of your breath will blow liquid paint evenly over the paper you’re aiming at. Hold the paper closer to get interesting “flowers.” If you suffer from emphysema or asthma, though, forget it—it takes a lot of lung power to move the paint and keep it moving evenly.

A fixative sprayer has two metal straws hinged together, one slightly smaller than the other. Drop the smaller straw into a small jar or bottle of fixative, water or paint, and blow into the larger one, which you’ve bent to form a right angle with the small straw. Don’t ask me why it works—I’m no physicist—but your breath blowing past the hole in the small straw draws up the liquid and sprays it on your surface.

To achieve these airbrush-like effects with a fixative sprayer, I mixed up a small wash in a little container and sprayed it onto my paper from varying distances. The “flowers” were made by spraying less than 3" (8cm) from my surface; softer effects are possible if you move further away from the paper. The harder you blow, the finer the particles will be.

Of course, you’ll probably use this tool more for backgrounds and impressionistic uses, like these quick suggestions of flowers. You don’t have a lot of control, but you can get some nice abstract effects as well.

Ordinary soft drink straws are handy for painting in several ways. You can blow a puddle of paint around in nice amoebic shapes; you can paint directly from the end of the straw by filling the tube with a wash, then holding your thumb over the end until you want to release it; or you can stamp or print with the straw.

You can’t really have complete control with straws, but they’re fun sketching tools, especially if you’ve forgotten your brushes or pens! Here I drizzled some paint from the end, spread it around, blew through the straw to push up the tall trees, and drew back into the damp wash with a straw I had cut to an angle to form a point, like an ink pen’s nib.

A Push a juicy wash of paint around by blowing through a straw, changing direction at will. This creates shapes useful for rough textures such as tree bark or rocks. You can have more or less control, depending on how hard you blow.

C Draw with the straw as if it were a pen. If you’re steady-handed, you can cut a nib in the end of your straw in the way that our forebears used to make quill pens.

Blowing with a straw creates fun, interesting effects. One artist I know created beautifully abstract flowers just like this!

You can use a variety of tools together to create a painting—just be careful not to overdo. Keep it subtle, or keep it appropriate to the subject. Having an arsenal of tools at your disposal will set you free to create effects you might not even have imagined before! Have fun, play, practice and discover which tools work best together, and which work best for you.

In this painting, the view of the steam rising from my neighbor’s house on an icy winter morning was too beautiful not to attempt to paint. It was a challenge, but my tools helped me create the effects I was after.

Pigments

Burnt Sienna

Cadmium Red

Cadmium Yellow

Cobalt Blue

Quinacridone Burnt Scarlet

Quinacridone Red

Ultramarine Blue

Brushes

1-inch (25mm) flat

nos. 6 and 8 rounds

Rigger

Round stencil brush

Small, stiff brush

Surface

140-lb. (300gsm) cold-pressed watercolor paper

Other

Liquid mask

Palette knife

Salt

Sandpaper

Sharp stick (optional)

Small squeeze bottle

Spray bottle

Draw in the shape of the rooflines and the snow-covered fence, then protect the upper edge of each using mask from a small squeeze bottle (these are the blue lines you see along the roof peaks and the top of the snowy fence). Use liquid mask to protect the steam in the center, spattering it on with a round stencil brush and then hitting it quickly with a spritz of water to make it spread in unexpected ways. It also served to soften the edges a bit.

Use a 1-inch (25mm) flat watercolor brush to paint a strong wash of Cobalt Blue on the snowy roofs. Let this dry. Mix Cobalt Blue and Quinacridone Red with just a touch of Cadmium Yellow for the sky, and while this is still wet, add salt near the blue roofs to suggest distant, frosty trees.

Darken the area of the background trees with a mix of Ultramarine Blue and Quinacridone Burnt Scarlet, scraping in bare limbs with a sharp stick or the end of a brush.

Paint the foreground snow on the fence with a clean mix of Cobalt Blue, Ultramarine Blue and Quinacridone Red. The sun is shining through the upper edge of the snow, so keep it a lighter, slightly warmer color—wait until the wash begins to lose its shine, then hit it with a spritz of clear water to give the top portion of the snow an icy sparkle. Let dry.

Paint the bare background tree with a no. 6 round brush and a rigger. Let this dry, then remove the mask, taking care not to damage the paper. Soften the edges of the masked lines with a small, stiff brush and clear water.

Lift out a couple of tree trunks with a thirsty brush and give the snowy fence line some definition with the same brush and clear water, blotting away the excess pigment.

Use medium-grit sandpaper to bring back the white of the paper on the edge of that bright cloud of steam, just enough to punch it up a bit!

Paint in the trunks and limbs of the main tree and the lower area of the fence with a dark mix of Ultramarine Blue and Burnt Sienna—use a no. 8 round brush for the larger trees and fence area, and a rigger and palette knife to suggest the smaller twigs. Be careful to paint around the snow.

Darken the snow on the main tree with a strong mix of Cobalt Blue and a touch of Burnt Sienna.

Work back and forth over the whole painting, softening here and there, adding more definition to the snow shapes, adding a few branches, and for a little added life, paint in that bright red cardinal with Cadmium Red and your no. 6 round.