User talk:B Clyde Beck

Watercolor Painting Helps and Hints

Painting in watercolor is both easy and a great challenge to those who want to paint in this medium. 1. It is an easy and washable medium for children to explore painting and colors. 2. It has many challenges just because of its use of water as the fluid medium and how that water interacrs with the paint and the paper.

   These interactions are the primary reason watercolor painting as a fine art skill is so challenging.

3. There are beneficial effects of watercolor that attract artists to take on the challenges of the medium. These Include:

    a. Transparency - watercolors are by nature transparent enough to be enhanced by the reflection of light 
        off the paper upon which it is placed. This transparency gives life to the color and the painting, which
        is part of the attraction to watercolor by admirers and painters, as well as collectors and patrons of the arts.
     b. Colors and hues are easily lightened by adding water to allow the white of the paper to reflect through the diluted pigment. 
        Thus a red can become pink by simply adding water.
     c. Colors can be lightened to a paler hue directly on the paper by adding water on or next to the color on the paper and drawing the 
         pigment out into the water. Graded washes of a color can be achieved in this way, whereas an opaque medium, such as Acrylic,
         must have additional white paint mixed with the color and blended out to get a similar effect of lightened gradation.
     d. Overlaying paler washes onto dry/almost dry color can deepen effects such as creating depths of water or shadows on grass
         while preserving the detail.