This month’s watercolor challenge theme is “Shapes” and I thought this post would be perfect for creating a watercolor blending tutorial by using the example of “Triangles” which is one of the weekly prompts.
If you’re wondering about the 2018 watercolor challenge, have a look at the links below.
2018 WATERCOLOR CHALLENGE – AN OVERVIEW
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Blending or wet on wet technique is the method of dropping in color while the paint is still wet. This creates the look of a seamless transition of color.
Materials used for the watercolor blending tutorial:-
- Arches rough watercolor paper
- Winsor and Newton professional watercolors
- Mijello mission watercolors
- Princeton synthetic sable size 8 round
Colors used :-
I love using color palettes from Pinterest as a reference to my color scheme. I find that it makes things so much more easier. My friend Dawn does a lot of color palettes on her blog from her own pictures of you fancy a look. I used the color palette HERE for this illustration.
- Cobalt turquoise light
- Turquoise blue from Mijello misson
- Ultramarine blue from Mijello mission
- Yellow ochre from Mijello Mission
Step 1: I started by painting a simple triangle in cobalt turquoise light. Next, I painted a smaller triangle in turquoise blue lightly kissing one corner of the previous one. The paint travels through and this traveling is called blending or wet on wet technique.
Step 2:Draw a third triangle with yellow ochre again gently touching a corner. The turquoise blue travel into this color creating a beautiful greenish hue that blends s beautifully.The fourth triangle is a super light wash with cobalt turquoise light. Here, I dropped some ultramarine blue at the corners and you can see the way the paint travels forming spider web patterns because of the beautiful texture arches has.
Step 3: Continue adding triangles by dropping colors and touching the edges. Can you see the myriad of blends that are formed here. This my friend, is the beauty of watercolor and is unique only to it.
Step 4: In one of the triangles, I ran my brush at the edge. Here you can see how the color fades into the triangle as it travels. In another one, I dropped few drops of paint and created a lovely texture with dots. You can do so much by varying the strokes you create on a wet surface to create so many interesting effects. Experiment using some of the strokes shown here in this watercolor blending tutorial and more of your own.
I hope this detailed blending tutorial was super useful. Have a look at this tutorial as well for different ways you can blend and some other ideas. Also don’t forget to take the awesome 2018 watercolor challenge with me.
And down below are some more examples for you to see.
As always, thank you so much for stopping by. x
Thank you for the lovely, in depth tutorial. I look forward to trying it out. I checked out Dawn’s color schemes. Not sure how to use them for painting. There are no color names, so how do you know what paint color they equate to?
Hi Rhonda. Thank you so much for the lovely words. What I usually do with the color schemes is print them out and test the colors. It doesn’t have to be the same. It’s a good reference for color combinations. I hope that helps ?
Thank you for the fast response. That sounds good and I will give it a try. Maybe eventually I’ll come to know what the colors look like on sight. Right now I wouldn’t know a cobalt blue from an ultramarine if I saw them apart.
Haha yes. But swatching colors really help. Most of the time the colors that you see on your paints raw are not the same when applied on paper. Sort of like choosing paints for the wall. There are so many colors that look very similar to each other that it can be difficult to keep track of every single name. ?