From the article: What is the Most Difficult Thing to Learn in Watercolor?
What do you think is the hardest thing to learn with watercolor paint? It all seems to be so easy -- just add water to paint, and paint to paper -- but the results soon make it clear watercolor isn't quite as simple as that to master. What is the one thing you think is the most difficult to master with watercolor? Share What You Believe
Erasing
- Be sure to use an eraser very sparingly on your drawing. You will wreck the paper if you get in there too much.
- —Guest Guest Posy
Choosing Colors and Waiting
- I find it hard to choose the right colours for the right work, as well as having to wait for some time after the first wash for it to dry.
- —Guest muneeb
Let the Water Do Its Thing
- The hardest thing to learn when putting water and paint to paper is to let the color and water do their thing. My best paintings are those where the color has mixed with the water already on the paper and I haven't tried to fix anything. When this underpainting of bright colors dry, only then do I add my strokes to combine with what the paint has given me. The natural "strokes" of paint and water beat me every time for beauty.
- —Guest Joanne Schmitt
Most difficult thing to learn...
- Highlights! Leaving the paper white and working with shading/highlights backwards, i.e. placing/mapping out the highlights first.
- —Guest novraine
Erasing
- Keep the erasing of any drawing to an absolute minimum. It will tear the sheet. So plan ahead, which I find difficult.
- —Guest Posy Beer
hardest thing about watercolor...
- One thing most of us forget as well as the amateur, is that watercolor is the hardest medium to work with. Why, because it does not allow you to make mistakes. Once you put it down on paper, it's a done deal!
- —Guest Gus Castaneda
using watercolor
- I find the most difficult thing in watercolor is shading and highlights. If you paint the entire area there is now way to go back and take the color out to show the white of the paper and I find that it is difficult to blend the paint so that it looks like a shadow with the rest of the paint.
- —Evadney
watercolor challenges
- A big challenge is practicing restraint. Minimize strokes for a fresh look. Too many paintings look over worked.
- —Guest styler
Not Painting
- For me, the most difficult part of watercolor is to constantly keep in mind that you are staining... not painting.
- —Guest Richard Kelver
To choose the best color
- The most difficult thing is how to choose the correct paint for the correct color in the painting, but I read in a book that to overcome this we can try to learn to describe colors by its hues, saturation, and the values, as in light and dark, and I started to find the watercolor not so difficult anymore.But the problem is, when I am so tired and impatient to see the final or the finished painting, I just choose any color that on the pallette, not mixed, and my painting becomes garish after that
- —Guest Iin
Difficulty of watercolors
- The most difficult thing about watercolor to me is keeping control of the consistency of the paint. If you don't take your time and be patient with it, it is very easy to over dilute the paint.
- —Guest Jackie
Wet in wet
- Judging the right time to drop colour in to the wet paper - not too wet, but not too dry.
- —Guest Eric Cook
The difficulty of watercolour
- Watercolour intuition comes very slowly and is easily lost when when I am distracted or tired. The combination of staying aware of your plan for whilts, tones, shades while also "being loose" is the major challenge in this medium. Painting VERY early in the morning and using music you love both help I find.
- —Guest Sarah Hollier
Keeping it simple
- Like all media that one may use, the hardest thing about watercolor is keeping it simple. Study the watercolors of Winslow Homer or Andrew Wyeth to see how their greatness was in the simplicity of how they used watercolor.
- —Guest Jim Meaders
Keep my love for the colors I love
- When I started as a complete novice with classes I was taught that the background must be darker than the object. I love painting flowers like arum lilies, roses, cosmos, to many to mention. My colors are pastel shades, losts of white in flower and background and the background normally a pastel marble effect. I learn't to paint what I love and not follow lessons to the full extent. Now the unexpected happens ever so often with the most amazing results.
- —Guest Ria Harmse
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