The Colour Wash

One of the more important things to learn when using watercolours is the 'wash'. This is when you apply a transparent layer of colour over the paper. Usually this will be an even layer as opposed to a 'blotchy' or 'patchy' one. Sometimes it will be applied to the whole of the page, other times it will be applied to a single area - like a wall of a building. You can build washes up one on top of the other to obtain greater depth of colour or to mix colours. With the wash being transparent the colour underneath will show through the one being applied on top.

Let's assume you want to apply a background wash to the whole page. Before you begin, you should decide if you want any area's of your painting to be the white of the paper. If so, now would be the time to get busy with the masking fluid! Once you've done that you'll want to get a saucer or something similar, large enough to hold a mixture of pigment and water sufficient to cover the whole of your paper. Next you'll want to put your paper at a slight tilt

About as steep as this diagram would be right. The idea is to have the wash moving down the paper but not at such a rate that you end up with a wet lap. Load your brush up with the mixture of paint and water and quickly sweep it across your paper then load the brush again and starting just underneath your first stripe - but slightly overlapping it - paint another stripe. What your aiming for is the paint above to bleed into the paint below. Don't be tempted to go back and even bits out that seem to be flowing at different rates. Time is of the essence here. You need to keep going, painting stripe below stripe, always with a slight overlap, until you get to the bottom of your page. Because you've kept working wet into wet, and because of the tilt of your page, you should find that the stripes coalesce into an even coating of colour.

For this to work properly, you have to start with your colour already mixed, and with sufficient amounts to cover all of the page. You absolutely cannot stop in the middle of the wash to mix up more colour - you'll never get it to look the same - by the time your done mixing more colour the first area will have started to dry out leaving a hard edge. If you don't have your page tilted the wash will 'puddle' rather than move smoothly down your page. If you have it too steeply tilted you may find you have streaks running from top to bottom.

Washes are tricky to get right, but it's more down to practice than having a special gift for doing them! Try doing them on plain cartridge (stretched would be easier) before using your good watercolour paper. It won't look so good but you'll be able to do lots of practice runs without worrying about the cost. When you think you've got the hang of it, then try it on your watercolour paper and you'll likely find it looks a lot more pleasing because of the nice texture of watercolour paper.