Watercolours

Vlasta Peyerlová

Watercolours belong to most basic art equipment and are highly disregarded by most artists. They're too underrated in my opinion. Most people think that watercolours are just for kids, but I think that's wrong because they just have much more potential than this.

First thing is to recognise bad watercolours from good ones. Never buy bad watercolours, because they're useless. They're extremely hard and you can't get a proper colour from them, no matter what you'll do. I think that's maybe why nobody recognises watercolours as real art, because there's too many of bad watercolours.

So what are the prominent attributes of watercolours? Well, they have nice colours, it's easy to mix them and they're cheap. They're right for you if the aquarelles just aren't your style and anilines are too bright for your painting. Or when you can't spare money on more expensive equipment. Also it's much easier to correct mistakes.

I was using them for quite a while, you could say I became an watercolour expert. So here's some tips. If I want to make something sharp and precise, I would have my brush to contain less or almost no water. In fact I use so little water that I don't need any sort of underlayment and I don't need to bother with accidental blurs and it stays clean so I don't need to change it too often.

Next thing is mixing colours. My advice is: just rely on instincts. Even if it seems crazy or illogical. And when you're not sure about it and you don't want to thoughtlessly ruin your painting, you can always use some sort of palette. Which I never use, I just mix colours how it feels right and I don't know what I'm doing half of the time. But surprisingly, it works. I don't why, but you can try it and see for yourself.

So then we have shades and outlines. The outlines for this should be very thin and sharp, so I usually shape my brush to the most convenient form. I personally use black very rarely, I prefer to use blue or sometimes red. Because when I'll then use black somewhere and it creates very nice contrast. You can also use the lightening trick from aquarelles. If you didn't use too much water, it should work just fine.

That's for the most underrated art equipment in the world. They're much greater than they look, if you use them correctly.