The instinct on opening a first paint set is to attempt a picture. It is the least efficient thing you can do, because a picture asks you to solve six problems at once while you understand none of them.
Spend the first hour on four exercises instead. They are not glamorous and they will teach you more than the next twenty paintings.
One — the flat wash
Tilt the board slightly. Load the brush, lay a horizontal band, and let the bead of water at the bottom edge pull into the next stroke. Do not go back into it.
The lesson is that watercolor is a conversation with gravity and evaporation, and that touching a wash while it is drying is what ruins it.
Two — the graded wash
The same band, but adding clean water to the brush with each pass so the colour thins as it descends. This is every sky you will ever paint.
Three — wet into wet
Wet a square of paper with clean water, then touch a loaded brush into it and watch the pigment travel. Vary how wet the paper is and observe how differently the colour behaves.
This is where soft edges come from, and the timing is something only your hands can learn.
Four — the value scale
One colour, seven squares, from as pale as you can manage to as dark as the pigment allows. Nearly every beginner painting fails on value rather than colour, and this exercise is the correction.
Written by Marguerite Osei