I used to think that my painting skills decided the quality of my artwork, not the tools I used, but I realized I was wrong when it came to watercolor painting. Watercolor supplies truly matter and play an important role in the quality of the final painting. Low-quality art supplies might cause you frustration and slow down your progress. That’s why it’s worth it to read about essential watercolor painting supplies for beginners before you even buy your first art supplies.
If you just get started, a list of basic watercolor painting supplies as below should be enough:
- Watercolor paper
- Watercolor paints
- Watercolor brushes
- A watercolor painting palette
- A painting board
- A jar or bucket of water
- Tissue paper or a cotton rag
You can also prepare a pencil, an eraser, and other art materials like masking fluid, masking tape, an easel, and a water spraying bottle. These are optional and depend on what painting ideas you have in your mind.
However, there are many different kinds of watercolor painting supplies at different price and quality ranges. How can you choose the right ones without wasting money and time on low-quality materials? Do you need to buy expensive art tools when you are just getting started? This post will guide you to the world of watercolor supplies and save you time when selecting the tools for your artistic journey.
Watercolor Paper
You may ask “Can I use sketchbook paper for watercolor?”. I would say it is possible if you plan to paint something simple with fewer layers. However, if you want to paint multiple layers for complicated painting ideas such as portraits, landscapes, and still life, especially in a realistic style, you will need the right paper for watercolor painting.
Which Paper Is Best For Watercolor Painting?
The best paper for watercolor painting is the one that is thick enough to absorb a large amount of water, its surface allows pigments to flow well to create the effects you want, and it keeps the vibrance of the colors well for a long time.
There are four parameters you need to look at when selecting watercolor paper.
- Thickness (gsm or lb): The thickness of a paper sheet is indicated by its weight, in grams per square meter (gsm) or pounds per ream (lb). The thicker paper has a larger gsm or lb number. The paper with 300 gsm or 140 lb is good for watercolor.
- Cotton percentage: Watercolor artists tend to use 100% cotton paper because it’s strong and allows pigments to travel well.
I have tried paper that has less cotton percentage and encountered some issues such as the paper being damaged when I lifted the colors (color lifting technique) or when I removed the masking tape, the colors didn’t blend well to create the gradient effect. - pH level: pH is used to measure the acidity, in this case, of the paper. The acidity in the paper will decide how long the paper lasts. Choose the paper that is acid-free (with pH of 7 or slightly greater) if you want your painting to last for a long time without the colors fading away or the paper turning yellow.
The texture of the watercolor paper: The texture of the paper is created by the way the paper is made. The texture of the paper will decide the texture of your painting. Check if the paper is cold-pressed, hot-pressed, or rough.
Hot-pressed paper has a smooth surface, cold-pressed paper has some texture, and rough paper has a lot of texture. Give each one a try and see which paper you prefer.
Which Watercolor Paper Brand Should I Choose?
There are many watercolor paper brands on the market. They provide paper with different quality at different prices. The cheaper paper doesn’t necessarily mean it has lower quality. Here are some paper brands that many professional watercolor artists are using, listed in a random order:
- Arches
- Fabriano Artistico
- Canson
- Baohong
Each brand also produces different ranges of paper for different target customers such as artists or students. The ones for artists are more expensive than the ones for students (or academy).
It depends on your budget and your goal in watercolor painting so that you can choose the suitable brand for yourself. High-quality watercolor is expensive but worth it to invest in if you want to do watercolor painting professionally. Make sure you consider the four parameters mentioned previously when selecting the paper.
Watercolor Sketchbook
Why A Watercolor Sketchbook Is Good For Beginners?
You can start watercolor painting without a watercolor sketchbook, but I highly recommend you have one. It’s because a watercolor sketchbook is a safe place for you to study watercolor techniques and to make mistakes. You can comfortably experiment with different ways to use watercolor without the fear of being judged. Each painting doesn’t need to be a masterpiece.
A watercolor sketchbook is similar to a diary which records your learning progress. You can go through the artwork you have done, compare them, and see how much you have improved in watercolor painting.
Can I Use A Pencil Sketchbook For Watercolor?
A regular sketchbook for drawing with pencils or graphite might not be ideal for practicing watercolor because the paper is usually thin (about 140gsm). However, don’t let that prevent you from starting your watercolor journey. Just get started with whatever you have now and invest in better art supplies over time.
Watercolor Sketchbook Alternatives
What if you cannot buy a watercolor sketchbook? No worries! You can buy a block of watercolor paper sheets to practice regularly and categorize them by topics, months, etc.
There are different sizes that you can choose from. For daily practice, I usually use a small size, about an A5 or A4 paper size (or 8”x6”). This size is perfect for a painting that I can do within 2 or 4 hours.
You can also buy a roll of watercolor paper and cut it into smaller paper sheets in the sizes you desire.
Watercolor Paints
Which Watercolors Are Best For Beginners?
There are many brands selling watercolor paints at different qualities and prices. It, again, depends on your budget and your goal in watercolor painting to choose the paints you want to start with.
To give you a better idea of the watercolor paint market, here are some insights:
- Watercolor paints come in 2 forms: tubes and pans. The tubes contain moist paint and the pans are like colorful cookies. You can find paints contained in plastic or metal tubes. The watercolor pans can be round or rectangular.
- Watercolor paints are provided with the academy’s quality and the artist’s quality. With the artist’s quality paints, you can create more vibrant paintings with the right effects you want to achieve.
- The artist’s quality watercolor paints therefore are also more expensive than the academy’s quality ones.
- You can buy sets of 6, 12, 24, etc. colors, or buy the single tubes separately.
- There are some popular watercolor brands such as Daniel Smith, Winsor & Newton, Sakura, White Nights, Holbein, and Art Spectrum.
How Many Colors Do I Need For Watercolor Painting?
If you are just getting started, I recommend having basic colors to practice mixing colors. Equip yourself with red, yellow, blue, green, brown, black, and white. With those seven colors, you can create many other colors, shades, and tints. If you buy a set of colors, I would recommend not buying over 24 colors.
From my experience, there are some colors I use more often than others. I mix colors to get less saturated and vibrant colors for my painting, such as mixing sap green with ultramarine (blue) or with burnt umber (brown) to get the greens I want for leaves. Because of that, having too many colors in my set is not necessary.
Black & white paints are optional. With watercolor, you can reduce the saturation of color simply by adding more water to your palette. You might want to buy Chinese white paint or white gouache for highlights if you are a beginner. Black paint is usually avoided by artists. They will prefer mixing different colors to create dark grey colors than using pure black in their artworks. So, you don’t need to buy a lot of black and white paint.
Should I Use Gouache For Watercolor Painting?
Gouache is also a water-based medium that doesn’t have as high a transparency as watercolor. Gouache is designed to be opaque. You can similarly use gouache to acrylic, meaning you can add brighter colors on top of darker colors. With gouache, you will not get the transparent effects as when you use watercolor paints.
Watercolor Brushes
What Brushes Are Best For Watercolour?
Brushes that can hold water and pigments, and don’t damage watercolor paper, can be used for watercolor painting. You cannot use brushes used in oil or acrylic painting for watercolor painting.
Watercolor brushes have bristles made from natural hair, synthetic hair, or a combination of natural hair and synthetic hair. The natural hair can come from squirrels or buffalos. Brushes with natural hair can hold water and pigments better than the ones with synthetic hair. Professional artists usually use brushes with natural hair because of their higher quality and better painting effects.
Different Types Of Watercolor Brushes
When it comes to shape, there are many types of watercolor brushes for different purposes.
- Round brush
- Flat brush
- Wash brush
- Mop brush
- Angle brush
- Filbert brush
- Fan brush
- Rigger brush
- Dragger brush
How Many Watercolor Brushes Do You Need To Get Started?
To get started, you can use from one to three brushes. I recommend getting brushes in three different sizes for painting large areas, small areas, and precise details. For painting large areas, choose a mop or flat brush. A round brush is good for painting small areas. For small details, get for yourself a rigger brush.
When you get used to those brushes, you can buy more brushes for special effects such as an angle or a fan brush.
Watercolor Painting Palettes
How To Choose A Watercolor Palette
You will need a palette for mixing colors when painting. A watercolor palette is different from a palette for oil or acrylic painting. A watercolor palette needs to have wells for you to contain the paint and mix the colors. I would recommend a palette with as many wells as possible so you have a lot of room for mixing colors. I’m using a palette with 33 wells including 5 big wells for color mixing.
A palette can be made from plastic, metal, or ceramic (or porcelain). A ceramic palette is easier to clean so your colors will not be dirty over time. However, a plastic or metal palette is lighter and better for traveling or plein-air painting.
You can also use a flat ceramic plate to mix colors. Remember to choose a white plate so you can see the correct colors after mixing them.
How To Set Up A Watercolor Palette
If you use a set of watercolor tubes, you will need to set up the colors on a palette before painting. There is no rule for setting up a watercolor palette. Set it up in a way that is convenient for you to mix the colors.
You can squeeze the paint into the small wells on a watercolor palette. Each well should contain only one color. Try to keep the colors in the same order as it is in the color set, meaning warm colors should be next to each other, and cold colors should be next to each other. This way will help you find the colors easily and mix the colors more correctly based on the color theory.
Many people tend to squeeze a lot of paint when they set up a watercolor palette. You can reactivate the paint when you paint next time. It is convenient to do it this way. However, I prefer to squeeze just the right amount of colors I need for a specific painting each time. The reason is that sunlight will break down watercolor molecules so the color will fade over time. I just tried to keep the paint in the tubes to keep the quality of the colors. It’s up to you to set up a watercolor palette in your favorite way.
How To Clean Up A Watercolor Palette
It is important to use a clean watercolor palette when painting. What I mean by a clean watercolor palette is the wells that you use to mix colors should not have leftover pigments from the previous time. If your palette is dirty or has many leftover pigments, your new painting might end up being muddy and less vibrant.
If you paint every day, you can simply spray the mixing wells with clean water and use tissue paper to wipe out the leftover pigments. You should deep-clean your palette periodically to keep your palette clean.
A Watercolor Painting Board
Any hard and flat board can be used as a painting board. It can be a foam cardboard, a wooden board, or a plastic board.
I would recommend using a waterproof painting board for watercolor painting because it will not absorb water from your paper, so you can control the humidity of the paper. In addition, the board should be hard, otherwise, it might be bent when the stretched paper dries up.
A Painting Easel
A painting easel is not a must but is better to have, especially when you want to practice plein-air painting (painting outdoors). Choose a durable easel but also light so you can bring it with you to different places. There are different kinds of easels such as field easels, tabletop easels, H-frame easels, and A-frame easels.
A Bucket of Water
You can have a bucket or a jar of clean water to clean your brushes and to get water when you mix the colors on a palette. The container needs to be deep enough to dip your brushes.
There are water containers designed for watercolor painting, but you can also use empty jars or mugs.
A Water Spraying Bottle
I find it convenient to have a water spraying bottle. It helps me water the paper more evenly before painting. I sometimes spray water to create some effects for my painting.
Masking Fluid
Masking fluid covers the details you want to keep the original color from the paper. It is useful to create highlights for your painting. Watercolor masking fluid works as a glue. Once it is left outside the container, it will dry up eventually.
Apply masking fluid to the small details or highlights that you want to keep white when the paper is dry. You can buy a masking fluid pen or simply use a small stick or brush to pick up the fluid. Wait until the masking fluid you applied dries completely before you paint. Finally, use a rubber to remove the dry masks when the painting is dry.
Masking Tape
Masking tape is used to fix the paper on a painting board and save the outline for your painting. It can also mask the areas you don’t want to paint. Choose the paper-based masking tape which can be removed easily after you finish painting, without damaging your paper. However, if the paper is low quality, it might be damaged as well even with the right masking tape.
The masking tape that is about 1 inch wide is good to mask the paper and to stick well on the board.
Pencils
Get one or more pencils so you can sketch before painting with watercolor. Some artists don’t need to sketch in advance when the painting idea is simple. For complex painting topics such as landscapes or portraits, sketching with pencils helps you get the proportion and perspective accurately and helps you see different layers to decide which layers you should paint first.
A 2B graphite pencil with a thin outline is good enough for sketching. You can also use watercolor pencils which will disappear when you apply watercolor on top of the sketch.
An Eraser
An eraser is useful for the sketching step or to remove masking fluid at the end of your painting process. A soft rubber is easy to find at any stationary.
Tissue Paper or a Cotton Rag
It’s crucial to keep your brushes clean and have the right amount of water when you paint watercolor. That’s why you will need to have tissue paper or a cotton rag.
Avoid using too thin tissue paper such as toilet paper or napkins as they will dissolve when they are too wet. I usually use the kitchen paper and it works perfectly. A cotton rag that absorbs water well can also do.
Using tissue paper to create some texture is also a technique in watercolor painting.
How Do You Use Watercolor for Beginners?
Simply dip your brushes in a jar of clean water, pick some pigments, and mix the colors in a well on a palette, then paint on watercolor paper. Remember to clean your brush by stirring it in water before picking up the next color. That way can help you keep your colors clean for next time.
You will need to learn how to control the amount of water and pigments to get the effects you want in your painting. Too much water can result in a less vibrant painting. Too little water will prevent the pigments from flowing on the paper so you can’t get the magical effect of watercolor.
There are many techniques in watercolor painting. However, as a beginner, you should master these top five most used watercolor techniques first before learning more fancy ones.
How To Store Your Watercolor Painting Supplies?
The better you store your painting supplies, the longer they will last. Here are some tips for how you can store and protect your art materials:
- Clean your brushes with clean water and mild soap (optional) after each painting session. Use your fingers to reshape the bristles. Keep your brushes horizontal instead of vertical so water will not run down to the wooden body of the brushes and damage it.
- Color your palette so dust cannot get into your paint.
- Keep your art supplies in one place so you can easily get them next time.
- Avoid direct sunlight or humid air around your materials. Sunlight can damage watercolor molecules.
How To Buy The Best Watercolor Painting Supplies?
The number one tip is to do research and read about the painting supplies and what are good ones that you need, before actually buying them.
You can find watercolor supplies at almost any stationery. However, it might be challenging to find expensive and high-quality materials at a place where they mainly serve students. Ask your artist friends if you have some, or order the supplies online. It may take time and cost a bit more money to order them online and wait for the supplies to arrive, but it’s worth it to get good ones for your art journey because you will use them for a long time.
Conclusion
Art supplies matter a lot in watercolor painting. They don’t only affect the quality of your artwork but also affect your painting experience and painting progress. You don’t need to have a studio with a full set of materials before you can get started. With the insights into the supplies shared in this post, I hope you can find essential watercolor painting supplies for yourself.
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