Learn watercolour painting

Advise and guidelines from well known artists and teachers to frequently asked questions on watercolor painting.

Q. I am a beginner. How can I learn watercolor painting?

Find some artists whose work you admire ,get their books from local library and try to copy their style to start.

Practice makes perfect.

Improvemypaintings.com has a good instructor who gives very good advice for any kind of painting and gives lessons you paint along with for very little money.

Buy used books from Amazon - they are as good as new.
Painting With Your Artists Brain by Carl Purcell.
Watercolor School by Hazel Harrison is good for a beginner.
Watercolor Workshop Robert Wade
Daring Color by Anne Abgott.: .. join watercolor groups and like pages in Facebook.

Values are a big part of watercolors. Draw something accurately and establish the lights and darks and middle values.then use the paints.

Buy watercolor paper to practice- Maybe just a Strathmore pad

Check out the Artist Daily website - they have some really good free e-books to download with a lot of theory on composition, colour mixing, different subjects and so on

see you tube videos of artists like Bob Davies

Q. How to make watercolor paintings bright rich and vibrant?
use best professional quality paints clean water use two pans of water one to clean the brush and one to dip, moist colors,

Try using gouache. It is thicker, more opaque and generally brighter than regular watercolors.

So much depends on the amount of paint to water, and the paper. For instance, Arches 140 lb. cold-press fades to almost 50%. For very rich vibrant colors, use less water and if you must glaze over, use the same colors.
Use many layers to brighten the color.
Your "staining" colors are stonger in color. A good quality paint is important.Complementary colors used next to each other will make your subjects pop.
over mixing on the palette can muddy paints, over mixing on the paper can muddy paints. Also mixing too many colors together can make mud.
Try mixing on the paper wet-in-wet not on a palette. Also get to know the paint's characteristics (transparent, sedimentary, opaque etc.). Transparent colors mix the best on a palette. Get to know your color wheel with tertiaries and match your paint to the closest hues on the wheel to guide mixing. Mixes using paints that lean toward complements will neutralize or "gray" the mixture. Ex: cadmium yellow deep leans toward orange and will produce mud when mixed with blues to make greens because mixing complements in equal optical amounts produces gray... .