Core Skills: Watercolour

In part three of this watercolour series, Kelly McKernan breaks down how to choose your watercolours, mix them and then create a limited palette

Kelly McKernan on choosing watercolours, mixing them and creating a limited palette.

The most exciting part of working with watercolours is watching those luminous colours come alive and react to water on paper. However, the fun dies down when the watercolours you’re trying to use just aren’t doing what you want them to, and that can happen often.

Every watercolour has different properties for different uses, and so part of understanding what works best for you involves a lot of practice and experimentation. A basic understanding of the colour wheel and a starter palette of colours will go a long way. Colour schemes are like shortcuts for guaranteed colour harmonies or provocative compositions. However, integrating a limited colour palette is my favourite route to a successful painting, using only a few colours to create a wide range of possibilities.

In this article, we’ll be looking at how to combine the properties of watercolour along with colour schemes and palettes to get the results that make watercolour so special, and how to avoid the pitfalls of combining ill-suited watercolours.