Painter How-To: Wet-into-Wet Watercolor

CreativePro Staff

4. Building up the midtones on the flower. Using medium-value colors, begin to develop your midtones, painting lighter colors first, then adding darker tones to continue to develop the form. Keep your light source in mind and let your strokes follow the direction of the forms. To resize the brush, or change its Opacity as you work, use the slider on the Controls:Brush palette (Window, Show Controls, or press Ctrl/1-5). We added deeper colors of lavender-pink, while keeping the brushwork loose.

Figure 4a: Using the Wash Camel variant to add deeper colors.

Figure 4b: Continuing to develop the mid tones with the Wash Camel variant.

We continued to gradually build up deeper color. As we completed the midtones stage, we switched to the Dry Camel variant of Watercolor, which allowed us to add a little more brush stroke texture over some of the wash areas and at the ends of the strokes, while still allowing the new strokes to blend as wet-into-wet.

Figure 4c: Painting bristle marks with the Dry Camel variant. The reddish color was added with the Wash Camel variant.

5. Painting wet-into-wet runny washes. Painter 7 offers dynamic brushes that allow you to emulate various traditional Watercolor "run" effects. For a smooth runny wash that will not displace the underlying color, use one of the Runny Wash variants. Choose a slightly different color in the Colors section and dab the new color on to areas with existing color. Using the Runny Wash Camel and Runny Wash Bristle, we applied brighter pink and magenta colors (using short dabbing strokes) on the deeper color areas of the flower petals. Then we added deeper pink and reddish colors to the interior of the orchid. The Runny Wash variants allowed the new color to mix with existing color without moving the existing color.

Figure 5: The drippy washes on the lower petals were painted with the Runny Wash variants of Watercolor.

Tip: Runny vs. Wet Washes
The Runny variants of Watercolor (the Runny Wash Bristle and the Runny Wash Camel, for instance), are useful for painting wash runs, where colors run together and blend, but don’t displace the underlying color. This is similar to a glazing effect. The "Runny Wet" variants, however, will run and displace existing color on the image as the new pigment travels. Often the Runny Wet brushes will leave a lighter area because the Wet variants cause leaching of the existing pigment. The Runny Wet brushes are useful if you want to add darker wet-looking edges to foliage or when painting a sky with rain clouds.

The default Runny Wet Bristle variant of Watercolor paints strokes that run vertically down the image and move existing color. The Dry Rate is set at 10%, allowing lots of time for the pant to run, the Wind Direction is set to 270,° and the Force setting (71%), makes the washes drip a long way. The high Pickup rate allows the brush strokes to move existing color.

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