Watercolour Cheat Codes

These are watercolour painting tricks I’ve learned through years of blood, sweat, tears, and a lot of paint. I’ve never taken art classes so I’m not sure if these techniques are common or not; I just know they work for me. 

In this post I explore:

• Why I spray perfume before I paint 

• Why I use cheapo $2 dollar store brushes

• What the most underrated art tool is!! 

• Why edging is important, lol

• Yes, even what lightbulb you use matters

• +more

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Ok let's dive in.

Always test out your colours before you use them. 

Your paper is the platform for your finished artwork, and colour is your most powerful weapon. Therefore you must know exactly what colour you’re using before you apply it. You must test your colours first on a separate piece of paper.

I like to think of the coloured blobs on the bottom as the crocodile’s soul or essence. 

When I first started out watercolours, I didn’t test my colours. I was clumsy and unintentional with how I used colour. I kept wondering why my artworks didn’t have the vibe I wanted. And colour is the single most important element that affects the vibe of a painting, because colour perception is electromagnetic waves of different frequencies of vibrations (vibe-rations). 

Testing colours is especially important for watercolours, since dilution really affects the opacity and vivacity of any colour. It may look one way on your palette but you find it way too soft on canvas. 

Brush types matter - but expensive is not always better!

Shitty $2 brushes from the dollar store are some of my most used brushes. They do the job great. But that doesn’t mean all your brushes should be cheap. Different brushes serve different functions, and the more you experiment with each, the more range you’ll have with brushwork. 

The reality is that there are some amazing brushes that you just can’t find at the dollar store. My point is not to look at the price, but the function. Don't disregard a brush just because it's cheap or expensive!

Here are the brushes I usually use, and why:

My favourite brush is The Eradicator.

Even though I own a billion brushes, these ones above are pretty much the only ones I use. The stiff brush is the only one that lifts colour, instead of adding colour. I'll talk about that more later.

Choose the right watercolour paper.

You’re at the art store, wracking your brain what watercolour paper to choose. Don’t worry, I got you. 

The two main things I look for (besides size) is texture and GSM. 

Texture refers to the surface roughness of the paper. I personally prefer to choose more textured paper because it adds dimension to the painting. I also find it "catches" my paint better.

GSM (grams per square meter) refers to the thickness of the paper. The thicker your paper, the more sturdy your artwork will turn out. Low GSM paper warps when it is too saturated with watercolours. I recommend you look for 220 GSM or higher, preferably 270-300 GSM.

Here is an absolute goated paper:

Note the cotton percentage. Some papers will advertise 100% cotton. I always assumed that was better... until I tried it out. I find high-cotton paper way too absorbent, insofar as I cannot lift colour from them - and that means I cannot erase mistakes easily.

Spray perfume before you paint.

Here’s a cool psych hack for painting. 

You can Pavlovian condition yourself to be a better artist.

Smell is a powerful anchor for emotional states. The right smell can transport you to a certain state of mind instantly. I recommend you choose a perfume that is light, stimulating, and unique and spray it before every art session. Over time, you will condition yourself to associate creativity with this scent. This allows you to enter Painting Mode quickly whenever you want. 

Just like Pavlov’s dogs salivating over the ringing of a bell, you can enter super-switched-on-artist-mode with the scent of your chosen perfume. 

Not that you've asked, but right now I use Jo Malone's Peony and Blush Suede perfume. :)

Get better at edging.

No, not that edging you gooner.

Your brush makes marks on paper that can leave different types of edges. If you are able to master edges, your watercolour paintings will have more dimension and depth. 

Here’s an example of some edges:

Hard edges are created by painting a brush stroke and leaving it. Soft edges are created by painting a brush stroke, and immediately blending it with a clean damp brush. Rough edges are created by using a really bristle-y brush, or not loading up the brush with too much water.

See edge variation in these dress folds of my most recent painting:

See how some strokes have soft edges that blend in with other colours? And some have hard edges that stop abruptly? Utilising edge variation makes the painting more "alive".

Use angular shapes in the undersketch.

This is also just personal preference, but may be useful if you keep sketching and it turns out too “cartoonish”. When sketching anything, try and use more straight lines and angles and then connect those lines with subtle curves. 

This is a tip I learned from the Charles Bargue drawing course. You can see it in action here:

A Charles Bargue drawing plate.

Reducing objects to angles allows us to see the relative distance between things better. It also helps us draw what we see, instead of what we think we see. Try it for yourself, I honestly think it makes the biggest difference.

Painting is different on dry paper, wet paper, and semi-wet paper. 

Practise over and over again, so you can learn how differently watercolours behave on dry paper, wet paper, and semi-wet paper. Mastering this skill is paramount to controlling how full your painting turns out. Blending two colours on dry paper simultaneously  is TOTALLY different from painting one colour, letting that layer dry, and blending another colour on top after. 

Blu-tack is the most underrated tool. 

This mfkn beauty is one of my fav things living in my studio:

The humble blu-tack.

It resembles the kneadable art erasers that they sell in art shops... But I’m confused because kneadable art erasers just suck, they’re too soft and they leave sticky residue on paper that ruins the canvas. I find Blu-tack erases way better, and is WAY cheaper. 

This is how I use Blu-tack in my studio, in descending order of importance:

1. Lighten the undersketch before I paint watercolours, so the graphite doesn’t show in the final painting. 

2. Erase small details in sketches. 

3. Pin up my paper on my drawing board. 

4. Stabilise my drawing board. 

5. Fidget toy

But seriously, there's no better thing that lightens undersketches to prevent graphite marks in the final painting. I just love it.

Use the right lightbulb.

This one is simple but important. Use Daytime lighting in your studio.

Switch out your studio lightbulbs from warm lighting to brighter daytime lighting. Look for lightbulbs marked “Daytime” at 5000-6500 K (K refers to Kelvin, the colour temperature of the bulb - lower numbers signal warmer light, and higher numbers cooler light). Painting under light that is too warm or too cool can mess up your colour perception while painting. 

Remember, you can take away colour in watercolour painting!

When I first started watercolours, I didn’t know that you could take away colour in painting. I thought you would only add colours; that it was a cumulative process of adding translucent layers upon layers upon layers. It isn’t like Acrylic or Oil Painting, where if you made a mistake, you could simply paint over it.  Watercolour paper is an unforgiving and absorbent mistress. 

But no. You can erase mistakes with watercolours too! The trick is in the stiffness of your brush. The next time you go to the art store, ask the attendant for a special type of brush called "The Eradicator" (as I mentioned earlier). You can also remove colour with normal non-eradicator brushes by using clean damp brushes on freshly applied paint. But definitely master this technique because the more control you have, the better.

White is the paper. 

Watercolour is an especially cool medium because you can create a light painting without ever using white. That’s because white is the paper. Watercolour paint layers are translucent, so if you need to paint pastels, just let the paper show through. 

However, on the occasion that paper whiteness isn’t doing the trick, I sometimes use white gouache to tint my paints. That’s because gouache has a higher opacity - I don’t need to use as much. I recommend you testing this out for yourself and seeing if this technique fits in your preferred art style.