The Ultimate Wet-on-Wet Guide: 12 Techniques Every Watercolorist Should Know

as you progress on your watercolor Journey you will realize that every Advanced technique you see is a variation of two fundamental ways of painting wet on wet and wet on dry and you may be surprised to hear that even the most intricate and advanced paintings are A variation of these two methods the secret is how we introduce nuanced variations in drying time brush Strokes pigment saturation and even gravity to produce a variety of different results on paper for example a very simple classic weton wet technique using just one blue color will give you a beautiful soft blend perfect for painting Cloudy Skies while a different blue and a slight delay in drying time coupled with a more saturated pigment will'll give you more defined elongated Strokes suitable for soft waves if you're painting a Seascape so follow along and I encourage you to play around with the same exercises at home because it's a really great way to understand and get comfortable with watercolor medium you'll get a ton of new ideas and most importantly the confidence to approach new subjects now let's get started with the classic basic weton wet wash that is the foundation of everything we will do so use a clean brush to evenly wet the entire surface with water the paper shouldn't be excessively wet so no dripping water and then we apply watercolor paint using a brush loaded let's say with some blue pigment I'm using phlo blue red shade and you can see that the wet surface allow allows the colors to spread and blend creating very soft edges and seamless transitions from light to dark this is great for creating dreamy backgrounds like soft Skies or loose abstract washes now instead of clear water let's prep the surface with some diluted pigment for example magenta and then add more concentrated colors wet into wet maybe some of that same magenta Maybe purple blue even some yellow this is called a charging technique you can think of it as a variation of traditional wet on wet where several colors are applied consecutively onto wet surface with different degrees of saturation so this approach allows for much more controlled color placement while still achieving these beautiful Blended effects it's great for Botanical art and anything that requires very vibrant splashes of color I have a full tutorial on this specific method for flower painting using chocolate or kits as an example and I will leave a link to it in the video description below let's now change it up a bit this time we will use one color but our Strokes will be different much more deliberate and we will also adjust our timing a little bit allowing our paper to dry slightly longer so I will cover everything with my aqua green this is a pigment from Windsor Newton very diluted I'll wait maybe an extra 45 seconds to a minute to let that first wash of color sink in and then I will follow with wavy horizontal Strokes using the same color the same aqua green but a few steps darker this is called wet on damp and it's perfect for painting realistic seascapes obviously but also very useful for for hair texture if you're into portraits don't forget to subscribe to my channel because in the next video I will take you through different variations of wet on dry technique and if you follow me on patreon I will be posting a realtime recording of this exercise with some additional commentary pigment recommendations and I will also talk about different examples of how you can use each variation of weton wet technique in your work there's a different variation of this wet on damp technique if you switch to a smaller longer brush and use more concentrated pigment in fact you can call it damp on damp because you really want to have thick saturated color on the tip of your brush for this to work if you haven't seen this before you might be shocked just how different the effect will be once I'm done so I wet my paper I wait a few minutes so almost no visible water on the surface and I'm applying my magenta using very long brush called rigger to create this soft lines this weton wet variation creates much sharper details while maintaining a sense of realism with a soft kind of Barely There very faded blend around every stroke it's perfect for Botanical art when you want to capture petal details and leaf veins the blue orchid tutorial where I showed you this technique in detail it's actually one of my most watched videos on the channel and it's not surprising because this method doesn't get enough attention as far as I can see on YouTube anyway but it's so useful when you want to create soft details with your brush in the next set of weton wet variations we will use gravity in different ways you're probably very well familiar with this simple gradient just a little bit of color on top of a wet section and if you leave it to dry in a slight angle the tilt of your paper will encourage the pigment to flow down gradually resulting in a smooth transition from light to dark I'm going to show you the so-called variegated wash which is very similar but you start with one color and then end with another instead of clear water and you can add several layers of this one after another creating very dynamic visually interesting gradients and they would be perfect as a first layer for your landscape painting or any sort of background where you want a sense of depth and distance with gradual color transitions the next version is a very extreme variation of the same thing but you will need some fresh thick paint straight from the tube I'm going to use the side of the package to apply my paint in a straight line I see these tutorials all over YouTube people often use like credit cards to apply Paint This Way sort of mimicking a horizon line but notice this time we have so much more of pigment it's sort of like sitting on top of the paper not getting fully absorbed and we follow with lots of clear water using a large flat brush while holding our paper on an angle so it can start falling down with gravity the resulting gradient will be much more expressive compared to traditional weton wet gradient or variegated wash I don't use this because I'm not into abstract art but it does seem to be very popular particularly for abstract landscape Explorations and you obviously need a lot more room or a larger sheet of paper for this to work better but the main thing is I just wanted you to observe the difference in contrast between this and the first two gradients we did for the the last variation in this row I will use some extra tools starting with a spray bottle so as you can see you can wet the surface of your paper with clear water this way instead of using a brush and this is quite useful again for some atmospheric Landscapes where maybe you want some tree shapes in a distance and you want a truly spontaneous organic shape without any hard or unnatural edges I will come back to this in a few minutes and show you how it works with a syringe also known as pouring technique but for now I will let it dry and move down to the bottom row and we'll look at four additional examples now without any gravity play so here I want to start with the simplest and most beautiful variation of wet on wet called blooming technique I use this all the time and it works best with granulating pigments I will use Tundra Violet from sh and green appetite genuine from Daniel Smith granulating just means they have heavier particles of paint so when they dry out the particles sort of settle in clumps and it creates a very nice texture and the way we will accentuate this further is by adding drops of clear water wet and to wet now notice how heavy water drops just push that paint out and it creates a really cool irregular sort of Border effect sometimes it's called cauliflower you can't really follow this with another a layer on top because it's so heavily textured but it is enough to create a sense of Dimension with just one layer and you may have seen me use this on green leaves in the Sunbird tutorial sometimes I use this technique on tree branches it's really beginner friendly way of creating a visually interesting Rich texture in just just one layer and I highly recommend experimenting with this technique for our next weton wet variation I'm going to sprinkle some salt onto wet surface salt absorbs moisture creating very unique effects and patterns as it interacts with the paint great for painting snowy Landscapes or just creating abstract backgrounds another use ful thing I wanted to show you is called lifting where you can literally lift your wet paint off the page to reveal the underlying white of the paper and depending on the tool you use it will create different shapes so for larger cloudlike segments I'm using tissue paper alternatively you can use the edge of your clean brush to lift very fine thin lines this is great for creating highlights and correcting mistakes you can observe this technique in more detail in this video on my channel featuring a sea line and the reason I'm including it as part of the wet on wet variations is because this technique works best on freshly painted surface it can in some cases work after your paint is dry but only if you used very low staining pigments so for example you can lift vidiian green long after after it's dry because it's low staining but something like phylo green will stain the paper much more and you can only lift it effectively while it's still wet finally I wanted to show you a soft Edge technique this is useful when you want to create a soft border between contrasting blocks of color by painting them close together so here we're still using wet on wet application because we don't want the colors to mix together too much we need to apply them with a bit of a delay timing is key with this approach so your first pigment should be slightly damp before you place the second one next to it and this way you keep the visual separation but there are no harsh lines between the two blocks of color and as promised I will come back and quickly show you how pouring technique Works using several pigments some of them I will apply using a syringe and here I'm being very generous with the amount of both water and paint literally pouring it in some cases on my paper much more water than typical wet on wet and I'm using gravity to direct the colors on paper as they're blending together so you get a very intense mix I showed you this method in detail in this video where we painted a swan and you can see how Dynamic these color transitions can look just make sure you use very thick paper that can hold a lot of water for this to work successfully so let me know in the comment section below if you can think of any other examples of weton wet technique with variations in timing color saturation and different brush strokes and I will see you next week with an in-depth exploration of wet on dry technique thank you for watching and painting with me

Channel: Anna Bucciarelli

Views: 57,297

Keywords: wet on wet watercolor, wet in wet watercolor, watercolor techniques

Id: lOBINzjnLyI

Length: 13min 25sec (805 seconds)

Published: Mon Jan 29 2024