Watercolor Art and Painting

Watercolor (American) or Watercolour, (English), is a painting method in which the paints are made of pigments suspended in a water-based solution. Watercolor refers to both the medium and the resulting artwork.

Some of the first paper watercolor paintings know were in Chinese, Korean, and Japanese using simple brushstrokes. India, Ethiopia and other countries also have long traditions in watercolor and fingerpainting with watercolor paints originated in China. If you look at the strokes here made with a brush, you can see that the art style was very simple and relies on the use of white space, yet the paintings and compositions remain complex.

Watercolor painting is extremely old, dating perhaps to the cave paintings of paleolithic Europe, and has been used for manuscript illustration since at least Egyptian times but especially in the European Middle Ages. The German Northern Renaissance artist Albrecht Dürer (1471–1528), who painted several fine botanical, wildlife and landscape watercolors, is generally considered among the earliest exponents of watercolor.

Among the elite and aristocratic classes, watercolor painting was one of the incidental adornments of a good education; mapmakers, military officers and engineers used it for its usefulness in depicting properties, terrain, fortifications, field geology, and for illustrating public works or commissioned projects.

In time, subjects became more complex and detailed. You can see where this artist ‘sketched’ out their idea, and then added watercolor. This painting is an unfinished watercolor by William Berryman, created between 1808 and 1816, using watercolor, ink, and pencil.

The traditional and most common support—material to which the paint is applied—for watercolor paintings is paper. Other supports include papyrus, bark papers, plastics, vellum or leather, fabric, wood, and canvas.

Perhaps the most interesting thing about watercolor is the brushes and ‘techniques’ used to make the paintings. These can be wet on wet, dry brush, speckling (actually ‘spraying’ the paint with the brush), salt techniques, and washes or glazes. These are the types of brushes you can use in watercolor. You can use from very small and fine for details to much larger and thicker for backgrounds and larger images. Watercolor is often mixed with other media such as pencil, pastel, and other forms of paint like gouache.

Below are some examples of the different types of watercolor painting techniques. Try these at home and see what you can come up with! A good rule of thumb is to tape your paper to the table in order to prevent the watercolor paper from ‘buckling’ and keeping it straight. (however, ask mom or dad first!). Specific watercolor papers absorb the water.

Watercolor paper is often made entirely or partially with cotton, which gives a good texture and minimizes distortion when wet. Watercolors are usually translucent, and appear luminous because the pigments are laid down in a pure form with few fillers obscuring the pigment colors.

Watercolor is easily used to represent many subjects, like people, buildings, animals, and historical themes.

You can paint something like these simple fish to some more complex leaves. Look carefully at the colors, lines, shapes, and where the artist(s) sketched out their subject, then filled it in with watercolor but also left the paper blank in the white areas!

American Painter Winslow Homer was well known for his watercolors of people, fishermen and wildlife. Look at the use of white in the paintings. In watercolor, often the painter did not paint the white but simply left it ‘blank’. This is one of the many tricks of watercolor painting that make it successful.

Another fairly well known watercolor artist is named Janet Stewart, and typically does Hawaiian themes. Her use of white space to create water is extremely beautiful and you can see the artistic style she has with everything she paints.

Observe the white space in the clouds and the water

Note the detail in the leaves and the white space left between them.

More Watercolor Examples

A sky example of wet on wet technique and dry brush and speckling on the bottom.

Some paintings are no more than a few strokes of the brush, and using different techniques to get the grass, house, and trees. Normally you would sketch out your ideas first.

More Watercolor Examples – Once again, your subject can be complex or very very simple like these three raindrops.

Watercolors where the artist allowed the paint to ‘run down’ the side of the animals to add something more interesting to the paintings.

Attached is a 10 minute tutorial on landscape painting regarding watercolors. Please watch as you’ll be doing something of your own for your activity as soon as we’re done. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Botw71f7vuU (click on or cut and paste into browser).

Look at the examples and you decide what you want to paint today! Try not to copy someone else’s inspiration- use your own and what appeals to you! There is no right or wrong way to do this. Sketch out your drawing and paint it! TIME FOR ACTIVITIES AND DISCUSSION!