Washes are great for backgrounds or large areas where you want either solid, gradient, or blended color.
EXPERT TIP: If you want more contrast, use watercolors for the background wash and gouache for the plant subject. If you want a flatter look, then use gouache for both the background and the plant subject.
Step-by-step instructions
- Choose your paper. If you choose thick hot press paper, you don’t need to wet and stretch the paper or tape it to the painting surface. However, you still need to tape the edges of the paper if you want crisp lines, but the tape doesn’t need to overlap the edges to secure it to the painting surface. If you choose thin cold press paper, soak the paper for a couple minutes, lay it flat on the painting surface, soak up any excess water with a sponge, tape the taut edges to the surface, and then let it dry before applying the wash.
- Select a paintbrush. Choose either a round or flat paintbrush that is large enough to hold plenty of paint to cover the wash area in the fewest possible strokes but small enough to maneuver around any details.
- Place the paint on the palette. Be sure to put enough paint or mix enough paint on the palette to cover the entire wash surface area. You can’t stop during the wash process to mix more paint. Making this mistake will lead to poor color matching, poor blending, or streaks due to the paint drying at different times.
- Wet the paper surface area with side-to-side horizontal strokes. Dip the paintbrush in clean water and apply it to the entire area where you want to apply the wash. It takes some practice to determine the right amount of water, but in general, it should be enough so that the area doesn’t dry before you finish the wash but not so much that the paper buckles or warps. A side-to-side motion across the page allows you to cover the most area in the least amount of time.
- Dip your paintbrush in your paint and apply it to the wet surface area. Use side-to-side, horizontal, sweeping strokes starting at the top of the page and moving to the bottom of the page, going around or avoiding any areas where you do not want to apply the wash. Be sure to overlap the strokes of each line.
If you want the wash to be the same color value across the entire surface, then dip your paintbrush in the same paint each time you reload the brush (Video 1).