Watercolor exercises and techniques

Purpose:

To experiment with a variety of watercolor techniques;

To make connections between experimenting with watercolor techniques learned to creating your own landscape watercolor.

In this unit I think I came to learn that watercolors can do much more than I originally thought. Being someone who has historically said how they hate watercolor, I think the exercises we did helped me to appreciate them more than I did before. I didn't previously realize just how many different techniques you can use in watercolor, and exactly how you were supposed to use them. Knowing now how to correctly make washes, utilize materials and paper, and what color choices are effective I feel worlds better going into the final painting. I especially enjoyed the use of tissue paper, plastic wrap, and sea sponges to create different textures. As a paint that once seemed very flat to me, I loved seeing how you can incorporate texture.