Are you wondering what the biggest mistake is in watercolour?

The one that can ruin painting? I think there is one, so let's see what we can do about it, and if we can actually turn it into one of our biggest advantages. 🤔

Biggest Mistake in Watercolour

As I see it, the biggest mistake you can make in watercolor painting is to label one of your painting outcomes as a ‘mistake’.

Don’t worry - I do also have some practical suggestions for you for those times when things don't turn out exactly as you might have hoped. Because that will happen when you are learning something new - its just part of the process. And believe it or not its a very good thing and I will explain why in a moment. First let’s just make a pact to try and never use the ‘m’ word - mistake.

When we use the word mistake, it implies that we've got something wrong, that we've made an error. This is not arithmetic. It's not one plus one. And if your answer isn't two, you're objectively wrong. This is fun. This is supposed to be relaxing. It's art.

I prefer to think of that word mistake in the context of filmmaking.

Picture one of those clapperboards and someone enthusiastically yelling, ‘take 3’! 🎬

Speaking of which… prefer a video to reading?

Any filmmaker knows that it's going to take multiple takes to get something right. He's not saying that all the other takes that they don't use are errors or mistakes.

He's just saying that we need lots of options and we're going to keep going until we find the one that we like. I think it's exactly the same in painting.

I also like to remember why it is that we actually paint. We do it for the joy of splashing that colour all over the page, something to help us unwind and relax a little bit. Why spoil that by judging ourselves when something we don't like happens in our painting?

If one of our objectives is the joy of learning something new while we're painting, then by definition, we have lots of things to learn.

If we never made any mistakes, then it would mean that there's nothing more to learn, and therefore our job would be done, and the fun would be over. We don't want that.

The truth about watercolour mistakes

So really, I think that mistakes are little signposts showing us what we want to learn next. If something happens in your painting that you don't like, you get to solve that particular problem. This is another reason we paint, to practice problem solving.

For me, one of the delights of an arty adventure is the endless opportunities that we have for further exploration.

Now when you're just starting out, I know that can seem a little bit overwhelming. And if you're finding watercolour a little bit frustrating, let's talk about the sort of things that could be going on, and what you can do about them. We’ll also figure out what your next move might be.

I think that the things that go wrong in paintings really fall into two categories.

Two Categories of Watercolour Mistakes

The first category of ‘mistakes’ is specific to watercolour, i.e. relating to do the technicalities of using watercolour paint, as opposed to another medium, like oils, or acrylics, or coloured pencils, or something like that.

The second category of ‘mistakes’ includes all the other skills you want to build that apply more broadly to any kind of drawing and painting you might up doing in any mediums not just watercolour.

Watercolour Mistakes Relating to the Technicalities of the Medium

So when it comes to the technicalities of handling watercolour paint, the first of the two biggest things that I think create problems is, the paper.

If you're finding that your paintings aren't turning out like perhaps a tutorial that you're following, or somebody's video on YouTube, or somebody else's painting that you've seen, it could just be that you're using the wrong paper.

Because paper can make a huge difference to watercolour!

Remember the magic of watercolour is in the water. So you do need paper that can cope with that. The sort of paper that you're looking for is something that specifically describes itself as watercolour paper. It's been specially created to handle all this water. And I like one with a decent weight to it. Now the weights in watercolour paper will be marked on the pad , when you purchase it.

So you're looking for something that says 300 gsm, that stands for grams per square metre, telling you about the weight, or it'll be 140 pounds, the, uh, equivalent. I also like paper with a little bit of a texture. I like loose, expressive painting, and I think a little bit of texture is very forgiving and helps us create the most marvellous textures, which really are part of the really fun parts of watercolour.

The other thing that I like is to find a paper that has got quite a good proportion of cotton to it. I find cotton based papers will have better absorbency.

Aside from paper, I think the second issue that is the biggest hurdle that a beginner needs to overcome when we're talking about watercolour technicalities, is understanding the impact of the ratio of paint pigment to water.

If you're not sure what I'm talking about, the best thing to do is to have a bit of a play. Get out your paints, and see what happens when you:

• mix strong mixtures of paint and

• dilute mixtures of paint

• add more water and less water

See what happens when you add those to papers that are:

• dry,

• damp, or

• soaking wet

You'll soon start to see how the ratio of pigment to water and the dampness of your paper react.

Spending time experimenting with different consistencies of paint and different dampnesses of paper is very valuable. You can learn so much from simple play and observation.

By the way, do you have questions about supplies? Then you’ll want to see this. 👇

Watercolour Mistakes Relating to Broader Art Skills

The other category of things that I think we can perceive as mistakes relate to your broader art skills. These would apply not just to watercolour, but any other art that you do. And when you come across something like this in your painting, it's a fantastic opportunity for you to figure out what you want to go and investigate next.

Because this is really part of the fun, isn't it?

So let me give you a couple of examples of the sort of things I'm talking about.

Drawing

First of all, it might be something to do with drawing. If you look at your painting and you think that the proportions look a little bit odd, or that maybe something's a little bit squished up, and it doesn't really represent what you were trying to paint, it might be that you want to work on your drawing skills.

Now, of course, you don't have to.

You don't have to be able to draw to start painting, not at all.

I think we all deserve to get on and have the fun of painting, even if we can't draw yet, because it is just a learned skill. So one of the things that you can do to overcome that is to trace your subject first.

And, that'll get you started for the painting. But there will come a time when you want to actually try and do the drawing yourself. It's such a fun thing to learn and I really strongly recommend doing that because I think drawing is baked into the painting process, whether you realise it or not.

Composition

You might look at your painting and feel a bit uncomfortable about it. As you view the painting, if it gives you a feeling of discomfort or awkwardness, if it's making you, tilt your head or, want to crop the painting, it's probably a composition issue.

And composition is another huge and fascinating subject that you can investigate in the art world.

Composition refers to the arrangement of the objects in your painting, and where you actually place them can make a big difference. There's lots of ideas on this, so there's plenty that you can go and learn about.

Value

Sometimes we look at our painting, and we think we've made a mistake, but really it's just that the painting doesn't have much oomph. It's not making much of an impact. It's a bit meh.

And that's usually a value problem.

It means that there aren't enough darks and lights, and the difference between the darks and lights isn't strong enough.

That's another lovely avenue for you to go and explore.

Colour Theory

Maybe you look at your painting and you think you've made a mistake because you were aiming for something bright and colourful and everything looks a bit, grayed out and muddy. That means you want to investigate colour theory and work out what you can do to make sure you keep your colours vibrant.

How to Fix Watercolour Mistakes

So these are just some of the sort of things that you might be seeing in your painting and calling mistakes. I'm hoping that now you see that they're a bit more like signposts that are showing you what to do next.

So I say, bring on the mistakes.

Now I know. You might be saying, hmm, that's all very well, but right now I've got a painting and something terrible happened and I'd like to fix it. But I've heard you can't fix watercolour mistakes. Well, first of all, no, they're not mistakes.

And secondly, there's so much you can do to fix something in watercolour.

But that’s the subject of another blog post…. this one.

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