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If you have ever wanted to do water colours and paint anything you can see or even better, imagine … then this is the course for you.

write about expectations / results / process and practise

https://www.handprint.com/HP/WCL/tech24.html

The difficulty in learning watercolor is that there is too much going on at once.

I found the only way to unlock the problem was to break the technique down into its basic components — brushes, papers, pigments types, paint behavior, tilting the wash, brushstroke techniques, prewetting, application strategies — then examine each component carefully, see what happens when I change or vary it, and finally put everything back together in a spirit of exploration and improvisation. That's the outline of this page.

You also need a a tiltable work surface — the paper should lie on or be affixed to a hard, flat surface that can be tilted quickly to any desired angle.

Always mix up a generous quantity of wash mixture, more than enough to cover the entire area you want to paint, with slop off the sides.

A fresh, flawless wash usually requires a rhythmic and uninterrupted performance. You can't stop in the middle to answer the phone, let out the cat, or look for a different brush. It's tricky to go back and do a small section over. Once you start, you're committed to finish. That's part of the challenge and the fun. Take the phone off the hook, let out the cat, and you're ready to start.

Brushes. The common advice is that you should use the largest brush practical for a wash. In fact, you can lay down a wash with almost any brush, but some brushes make the task easier than others.

Most painters go to a 1" or less flat brush (bright or one stroke) or a #16 to #12 round brush; the flats are especially useful for carving precise edges or wedge shaped cutouts, or for "scrubbing in" pigment or paint over an area of especially rough paper texture, a folded deckle, or a blotch of water repelling tub sizing.

On that point: don't try to brush hairs or debris out of a wash while it is still wet.

You can lay a wash on almost any kind of paper, but some papers make it easier than others.

The best paper for good wash results is moderately sized with a moderate surface finish or tooth (cold pressed or a gentle rough pressed). If the surface texture is too heavy, you will have difficulty laying down the wash mixture without pinholes popping open over the paper indentations, especially for active pigments.

It's possible to lay a flat or evenly graded wash on hot pressed (HP) paper, but the paper will ruthlessly show any irregularities in your wash mixture, brushstrokes, or brush wetness. However, if you want a wash to show painterly, expressive variations, then hot pressed may be ideal.

Most painters prefer the paper stretched, or of a sufficiently heavy basis weight (400 GSM or higher) that it will not cockle or warp when wet. Note that a heavier basis paper generally has a slightly rougher surface texture.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VjtmhyVXMT0&t=546s

Most wash tutorials give the impression that paints don't matter in your wash technique: all wash mixtures can be applied in the same way. This assumption is a legacy of "color theorists", who teach that paints are just "colors", so one "brown" or "blue" wash mixture is just the same as any other.

In fact, painters make paintings with paints, not with "colors", so the types of paints in a wash mixture have a major effect on the quality of the wash and how the wash should be applied.

In addition, the pigment behavior depends on how much the paint is diluted with water. So painters need to consider both factors before they apply the paint to paper.

When you start the new stroke, always brush upwards into the wash bead

Do not dip the brush into the bead or into the lower edge. This will break the liquid's surface tension, but provides nothing below the water to stop its downward flow.

To make a smooth wash, hold the brush handle as near to perpendicular to the paper as you can without limiting your arm movement or cramping your wrist.

more of the paper texture (or the texture of the brush bristles), then hold the brush with the handle nearly parallel to the paper surface.

lightly touch the brush to the paper with just enough pressure to maintain contact. This draws the pigment evenly from the brush (rather than extruding it with pressure), and spreads the pigment evenly across the stroke. Heavy pressure forces the paint away from the center of the stroke and toward the edges; a light touch also keeps the bristles from pressing heavy pigments deep into the paper texture.

Despite the common advice that you should work quickly, there is never any benefit in working as fast as you can. Just the opposite is true: you want to paint as slowly and serenely as possible, given your materials and objectives. The only constant is to keep the wash bead moving downward in a way that prevents brushmarks, pigment deposits and backruns. But how quickly you must move it depends on the tilt, the brush, the wash mixture, the heat and humidity, the absorbency of the paper, and other factors. If you can adjust any of these components to give yourself more time to complete the wash, there is almost never a reason not to do so.

Athletes know the benefit of visualization before performing in a competitive sport. This can also help with wash technique — once you start, you won't really have time to step back and consider your progress, and you'll forget the qualities of color or light that you found so interesting in the landscape. Begin by looking at the motif and visualizing your wash against it, exactly as if you were painting over a transparent sheet of paper. Visualize the brushstrokes, the pigment intensity, the wash flow, the edge painting. Locate the areas of light, dark, and color change. Continue the visualization from the first stroke of the brush to the last bead of the paint. Repeat several times, if necessary. Then, look down at your paper, and begin!

The final guidance applies to everything in painting: practice, practice and more practice. If the only time you paint a wash is when you are doing a painting that you care about, then the consequences of failure are higher. Because major paintings take longer to complete, you also have fewer opportunities to paint a wash, so you learn more slowly.

The solution is to play with washes by practicing basic exercises to learn how to do them better.

Rex Brandt painted washes around names or words written in fat white block letters in the middle of the page: painting around these complex curves and straights, while keeping the wash moving down the page, is a great challenge to your dexterity and sense of timing. You can also use drawn silhouettes of clouds or trees, or an urban skyline, to keep the exercises more practical.

Experiment with washes when you paint sketches: a mistake here is not so serious. Use scrap paper (the back of discarded paintings for example) to practice as often as possible.

• paper

• paint

• brushes

  • pencil crayon
  • pens
  • pencil

• Basic to advanced colour selection

• Organization of the pallete

• extra

http://mateuszurbanowicz.com/projects

• pratise trees
• plants ?

winsor and newton color chart:

http://d4of2brjuv1jo.cloudfront.net/assetfiles/73799e61-32a1-4db8-a3e8-730a91eb0cff.pdf

• How to use reference

• Sketching and rough compositions

• Light and Shadow

• Exercise Colour mixing

• brush work

• washs

• wet + dry matrix

• opacity

• layering

• read wash

• practise wash + layer

• Composition

• Layout and mid tone under drawing

• Exercise Drawing and colour

• color wheel

• examples

• paint point ink

• tight vs loose style

• layering - white

• basic comp

• practise

• 1 loose 1 tight painting

• 1 ink 1 paint