5 ways to get into watercolour painting

Watercolour is, so I am told the most difficult of all the paints to master. I used to think they were wrong, it had to be acrylic which dries so much faster and always felt far more unforgiving than watercolour. Recently I have been experimenting with watercolours for my artist book in painting and even mixing my watercolours with my other major which is printmaking. Though my obsession with watercolours is visible with the blogs design, Clara and I both like watercolours but I think I might be the more hardcore fan of it (Can one be hardcore about watercolour?).

Birthday present for bestie, testing watercolour illustration

Whilst I am far from an expert, I realise that in the two extremes of art mediums for painting that we do at Varsity I find calm in oil painting and extreme creativity in watercolours. I think I am more willing to experiment with different looks and feels in art when using the humble watercolour and paper as opposed to the hardcore dedication of the oils. This said, I love movies and BBC Historic Dramas about the Austen period where women paint utterly beautifully dainty watercolours and not being good at watercolours as apposed to cooking made you less of a woman. Seriously it is delightfully funny in a purely feminist way of oh how upper middle classes and the upper class where at that time. I don't remember ever reading these statements in an Austen Novel but I could have missed it.

Linoprint on watercoloured paper with hand stitched border

Through a lot of research (okay I mean a lot of Pinterest), I have been seeing some utterly amazing watercolour paintings and wonderful techniques on how to get started. I thought I would share the top 5 tutorials of how to get started and basic equipment.

5 ways to get into watercolour Painting:

1. The Alison Show has well written beginner tutorials on watercolour, go check it here
2. This seems to be a printable with some basics that are useful. 
3. How to do calligraphy with watercolours.
4. Mixing watercolours, a pretty and useful tutorial 
5. For pure inspiration of modern watercolour work