If you’re thinking of starting watercolour then first of all yay, another watercolour friend for me! Second of all, if you approach it right, you’ll absolutely love it. It’s been one whole year since I started watercolour and I can’t believe what I’ve achieved, my life is completely different now and I have this little hobby to thank.

On this blog post I wanted to share with you a few beginner tips along with how to approach your new hobby mentally so you don’t feel disheartened and give up. I hope you enjoy watercolour as much as i did.

The Right Approach

A few things to get you in the right mental space. It’s so important to approach art from a no judgment space. Be free, enjoy learning, make a mess…

1. Determination. You have to really want something and want something bad if you’re going to put the time into learning a new skill.

2. Accept beginner status. There is absolutely no shame in being a beginner, the joy comes in the difference between your work from when you first start to when you’ve put lots of time in.

3. Remove all judgement. It does not matter what you paint, if you think it’s good or not, what other people paint, that there’s is better than yours, that yours is better than theres. It just does not matter. The sooner you can let it all go and just enjoy the process of learning the better you’ll get.

4. Just do whatever makes you happy. Everything you create is you, and you’re amazing so just be proud that you created something. Ignore what you think other people will think.

5. YouTube is sooooo helpful. I sat most evenings and watched youtube tutorials before I turned in for the night, I found that the more tutorials I watched the more I learned but also the more excited I was about giving it a go the next day. Just remember that the person creating the video HAS BEEN PAINTING SO MUCH LONGER THAN YOU. Yours won’t work out like theirs and that is absolutely fine.

Some Things To Know

A few basic things to know about the medium when you first start.

1. No white. When using watercolour the paper is your white, if a part of your painting is white, don’t paint it.

2. Water lightens the colour. For a more intense colour you’ll use more paint to water, for a paler lighter colour you’ll use more water to paint.

3. Wet on wet. You can paint onto a wet surface and this creates a much less controlled looser finish

4. Wet on dry. Painting onto a dry page can give you much more control over your painting, strokes are tighter and more pronounced.

5. You can lift paint off. You can undo mistakes in watercolour by simply lifting the paint back off. Simply re-activate the paint with water and lift off with the brush. A sheet of kitchen roll is usully quite helpful for this.

6. Use 2 water glasses. When you clean your brush use the dirty water to clean the brush and then dip into the clean water so you aren’t putting dirty water back onto the paper.