Watercolor Painting, My Way!: A Flat or Graduated Wash

Author: Rod Webb, Associate Editor

	For a flat even wash use a mop brush. Mix up a quantity of the colour you wish to use - I will be using ultramarine blue. As you can see, it is a fairly watery mixture. Mix sufficently, in order to cover the whole sheet of paper. Running out of paint before the finish will ruin it completely.
	Raise the back of your watercolour paper so it is tilted about 15 degrees from the rear down to the front. Load your brush with paint and run a couple of strokes across the paper. After each stroke a bead of paint forms at the bottom, this is ideal.
	Load your brush again and run across paper, picking up the bead of paint at the same time. Always run your next brush stroke in the same direction in which you started. Reloading your brush with fresh paint each time will result in a nice even wash from top to bottom.
	If we want a graduated wash then to acheive this after the first couple of strokes we reload our brush with clear water instead of fresh paint. Each time we reload with clear water, the paint in the brush will be diluted somewhat, resulting in a graduated wash as you progress down the paper from the full blue at the top to almost clear at the bottom. Allow to dry completely before you continue with any other painting.