To lighten colors in watercolor, we add water. The transparency makes the color lighter. Oils and acrylics use white paint. So, then when do we use white paint? Often it’s to add a reflection after the object has been painted – an apple, a car, white caps on water. It can also be used to create some colors you might not have in your paint box. A pink for example. Cerulean blue can be made by mixing phtalo blue, cad yellow, and white. An opaque lime green. It has to be used sparingly or often turns colors mucky and streaky.

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Your old brushes can be used for masking, mixing, and putting texture on your paper. If your round brushes are uneven, trim them with scissors. They often come in handy if children want to paint and you don’t want them to use your expensive brushes!

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Baby syringes, the type used for the nose and found in drugstores for a few dollars, are an easy and efficient way to wet each palette color as well as mixing other colors in cups or palette sections. You have greater control over the amount of water and  none of the mess from using brushes.

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Paint in palette wells will usually last about 5 or 6 months. It will get crumbly and then you’ll know it’s time to clean it out and put in new. You can add a drop of honey to keep the paint moist as well.

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Mr. Clean Magic Eraser sold in cleaning aisles of grocery stores can help blot out, pick up, and clean up watercolor paint. Some of the big online art supply stores sell their version but it is the same substance. It is an amazing tool to help with watercolor boo boos.

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Please leave those fallen brush hairs alone. Let the paper dry and they will fall off. If you start to pick at the hair, you will damage your paper, creating a gully with a fingernail or tweezers or whatever, and the gully will fill up with watercolor and will appear darker than the surrounding color area.

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I’m always looking for inexpensive ways to get the watercolor job done. Big washes require big brushes and the best which are all natural bristle can be extremely expensive….$50 to $75. The big all synthetic brushes just don’t do the trick….they run out of paint on one sweep across the paper. Frustrating. And they aren’t cheap either. Japanese hake brushes work well, though sometimes they aren’t dense enough, or the hairs separate, or the hairs fall out frequently.

So, I’ve been experimenting with cheap 50 cent foam brushes from hardware stores. They come in widths up to 5″. I’ve been using the 1″ and 2″ and they work very well. Really. They work as well as my expensive watercolor brush.

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The best tool for this is a rubber cement pick-up which is an inexpensive item for about $2.00. Using your fingers can reek havoc because of the oil in your skin as well as rubbing paint into the white area and generally smearing everything.

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I’ve learned that an opaque red will bleed onto other colors. So, I put the red on last, if possible. Some blues will bleed as well, especially pthalo blue.

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Metallic powders which are used on picture frames usually sold in small jars,can be added to watercolors and then applied on the paper. They will give the color a metallic sheen. Mix the color in a small cup or mixing-well and add the powder. Test first before applying to your painting. Too much powder might dry and flake off.

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