I became interested in watercolour painting back in 2018 – at first, it was just to make pretty backgrounds for greeting cards, but YouTube kept recommending beginner’s watercolour tutorials at me and I soon started considering making art with them. My first set of “watercolours” was a set of Viviva Colorsheets (actually dyes, not pigment-based watercolour), which are beautifully vibrant and transparent (great for cardmaking!) but not lightfast, and I quickly realised if I wanted to create art that would last on a wall I would need to explore other options.
Because of this I became deeply obsessed with knowing the pigments my paints used and their properties, particularly transparency, granulation and lightfastness. I even made myself a watercolour pigment database so I could quickly look up pigments and find their pages on other pigment databases.
This meant I spent a lot of money on professional and semi-professional grade paints, which I’m not sure I necessarily recommend! It depends on what you want to do with your art – I was concerned that things I painted to give to family members would fade when displayed on a wall, so lightfastness was important to me. But you may have different needs, and that’s okay! It’s all up to you! If you are interested in my choices (not all of which I now recommend) you can see my list of owned watercolours.
At any rate, here is a list of some watercolour resources on YouTube that I found useful or inspirational when starting out. In my next post I will talk about my choices for 12, 16 and 24 palettes.
Painting techniques and projects
Makoccino:
Playlist: Watercolor for Beginners: This playlist covers a lot of beginner topics, like painting techniques, paper, brushes, and so on.
Playlist: Watercolor Painting Ideas for Beginners: I tried out many of these in my early days, particularly the ones with skies and silhouettes.
Kristina Werner
The cardmaker who convinced me to get an inexpensive set of watercolours instead of spending a lot of money on ink pads.
Playlist: Minimal supplies needed!: Lots of simple cards to make, mostly with watercolour.
Playlist: Watercoloring: Literally hundreds of videos of greeting cards made with watercolour.
Other YouTube channels with lots of information, beginner’s projects and tutorials:
Paul Clark: Lots of step-by-step tutorials which I have never followed, I just enjoy watching them.
Resources for building a paint collection:
Kimberly Crick: Tons of information about paint pigments, paint reviews and lightfastness tests.
Denise Soden (@inliquidcolour): Beautiful art, and lots of information about paints and pigments.
Dr. Oto Kano: Another great resource for paint information.
Teoh Yi Chie: Lots of paint reviews. Located in Singapore and an urban sketcher, so has a different perspective to other artists in this list.
Artists I find inspiring
@ashiyaart: Beautiful, complex illustrations with visible linework.
Natasha Newton: More gouache than watercolour, really unique art style I admire.
@furrylittlepeach: Mixed media illustrator. Australian!
Kaiteki Art: Japanese artist who works mostly with fountain pen inks.
Sarah Burns: Beautiful Scottish landscapes