How to Get Started with Watercolor

When you’re looking to get started with watercolor painting, what do you need and what do you need to know? This post is your one-stop shop to getting started.

Before we get too far, let’s start from the very beginning: What exactly is watercolor? At its core, watercolor is a water-based medium–meaning that the paint is activated with water–and it is transparent (see-through). These two distinguishing factors (the water-base and transparency) impact how you actually use watercolors. More on that in a bit.

With the definition out of the way, let’s jump right into the first part of getting started: what you need. Watercolor is a relatively accessible art form with only a handful of necessary supplies.

5 Supplies

Outside of a few household items (a jar full of water and some paper towels), you’ll need five supplies to start your watercolor journey.

1. Paint

This is what we’re all excited about! When you think of watercolor painting, I know you’re immediately itching to get your hands on all the colors. But hold your horses for a minute. Before you invest in a professional 36-tube color set, know that you’re still able to create fabulous paintings with a much smaller artist-grade paint set. For the best bang for your buck, I suggest getting the Winsor & Newton™️ Cotman Watercolor Paint Field Set with 14 half pans. Convenient for painting on the go or at home, this compact set has all the key colors you need for plenty of color mixing without breaking the bank. While they occasionally swap in new colors, as of 2025, it contains Lemon Yellow Hue, Cadmium Yellow Hue, Cadmium Red Hue, Alizarin Crimson Hue, Permanent Rose, Ultramarine, Cerulean Blue Hue, Viridian Hue, Sap Green, Burnt Sienna, Burnt Umber, Payne’s Gray, Ivory Black, and Chinese White. For this reason, it is the palette I use for my Watercolor 101 course.

If you want to start building a larger collection of watercolor paints where you have ultimate control and you aren’t concerned about keeping to a strict budget, I suggest creating a custom palette with tubes. Because paint tubes can be bought individually, you have incredible flexibility in building a palette that is exactly to your tastes, with any mix of colors, brands, and grade levels (from student to artist to professional). In my own work, this is what I have done and my palette is comprised of the following tubes:

• Yellow Ochre (Winsor & Newton Professional)
• Lemon Yellow (Daler-Rowney® Aquafine)
• Cadmium Orange (Winsor & Newton Professional)
• Quinacridone Gold (Winsor & Newton Professional)
• Winsor Red (Winsor & Newton Professional)
• Alizarin Crimson (Winsor & Newton Professional)
• Ultramarine Blue (Da Vinci’s Professional Quality)
• Cobalt Blue (Daniel Smith Extra Fine™️ Premium Artist Grade)
• Cerulean Blue (Daniel Smith Extra Fine Premium Artist Grade)
• Cobalt Teal Blue (Daniel Smith Extra Fine Premium Artist Grade)
• Indigo (Daniel Smith Extra Fine Premium Artist Grade)
• Green Gold (Winsor & Newton Professional)
• Hooker’s Green (Winsor & Newton Professional)*
• Neutral Tint (Winsor & Newton Professional).

*Until recently, I used Winsor Green (blue shade) instead of Hooker’s Green. This past fall, I switched to Hooker’s Green and loved the change. As you experiment with different colors and grow your paint collection, don’t worry if your preferences evolve—that’s all part of finding your style.

2. Brushes

Now that you’ve got your paint sorted, you need brushes to apply it. There are innumerable brands and types of brushes, but when you’re first getting started, I suggest buying good-quality but inexpensive brushes that can be used to create a wide variety of strokes. Round brushes are perfect for this, the Swiss Army Knife™️ of paintbrushes. On a daily basis, I always return to the following three brushes:

• The Princeton Aqua Elite™️ Round Size 8 – a synthetic bristle brush that holds a medium amount of water and is easy to control
• The Artegría Quill Round Size 2 – a quill style brush, similar to a mop brush, holds a lot of water, which is great for painting larger areas and creating more loose and expressive strokes
• The Escoda® Perla White Toray Synthetic Round Size 8 – the most expensive and the best quality of the bunch, this synthetic bristle brush has an amazing pointed tip that can create fine lines.

You didn’t read that last one wrong. I do use two round size 8 brushes daily. I’ve found it is truly the perfect size: You can paint broad strokes and cover a decent area quickly while still having a solid point to handle the thinnest details in most of my paintings. In fact, almost all of my paintings are made using just a round size 8 brush.

I also recommend painting with a size 8 because it prevents you from getting too detail-oriented. A common mistake I see a lot of beginners making is attempting to paint with a size 4 or smaller—and that’s just too tiny! They end up bogged down in the details for the entire painting process, instead of staying looser and only focusing on adding fine details during the last 10% of painting.

If you want to round out your collection with a few more brushes, I would suggest investing in:

• A ¾-inch flat brush for creating excellent flat washes (I use Grumbacher’s™️)
• A round size 14 brush for filling larger areas (I use Escoda Perla’s because I love their pointed tips)
• A round size 4 for adding final small details to your paintings (I use the Princeton Aqua Elite in my own practice, but another Escoda Perla would never be remiss).

3. Paper

One of the most important aspects of watercolor painting is your paper. Using a quality paper will change your painting experience. I strongly recommend investing in Arches cold press, 140-pound, 100% cotton paper.

If you want some cheaper paper for practicing, there are plenty of options. I suggest Canson or Motarro 140-pound, cold press paper.

4. Pencil

For sketching before painting, I like to use a 2H pencil. Any brand will do the trick.

5. Kneaded Eraser

Because they produce no eraser shavings, a kneaded eraser is perfect for gently erasing pencil marks on your watercolor paper without affecting the tooth.

Optional Extras

The following are by no means necessary, but they can be beneficial, especially if you paint regularly:

• A light board for easier tracing
• A small spray bottle for easily activating your paints
• A palette (if your watercolor paint set doesn’t come with one) for mixing colors and adjusting values
• Artist tape for securing your paper to your work surface to prevent curling
• White gouache (I use Winsor & Newton Permanent White) for adding highlights
• A black pen (I use a 4 mm Sharpie® Felt-Tip Pen) for adding finishing touches and signing your work
• Drawing gum (also known as gum paste or masking fluid; I use Pébéo Easy Peel) for preserving the white of the page (or a previous layer of paint)
• An incredibly cheap or old paintbrush, toothpick, or Q-tip® to apply the drawing gum
• A rubber cement eraser to remove the drawing gum once everything’s completely dry
• A hairdryer (or craft heat gun) to speed up the drying process.

Order of Operations: What to Paint First

You’ve gathered your materials and you’re all set to go! Now where do you start?

Activate Your Paint

Because watercolor is a water-based medium, before you start painting you need to activate your paint. This is especially important when you are using pans (which contain dried cakes of paint) instead of tubes (which contain hydrated paint). I like to use a spray bottle, but loading a brush with plenty of water and giving each pan a few drops also works perfectly fine.

Keep in mind that once you add your tube paint to a palette and let it dry, it will also need to be reactivated with plenty of water.

Painting from Light to Dark

First and foremost, because watercolor isn’t opaque like acrylic or oil paints, the order in which you paint is important. You always want to work from the lightest to the darkest value, preserving your highlights from the very start. You can always add additional layers of paint, or glazes, to darken a color, but it’s a bit harder to add highlights back in once you’ve painted over them. If you do forget (or accidentally paint over a highlight), it’s not the end of the world! You can use white gouache, an opaque water-based medium, to add them back in. Alternatively, you can use drawing gum to preserve your highlights from the start.

Your First Paintings

I’m not the world’s most patient human being, so I tend to just jump right into whatever I’m doing. (If this is also you, you may not like what I’m about to suggest, but I promise we’re just going to do one exercise and then dive right into a subject painting!) If you’re a more forbearing person, one, I applaud you, and two, this will be right up your alley.

If I was starting anew and could give myself some tips for what to paint first, I would suggest the following exercise: Activate your paints with water, choose your favorite color, and paint a line. Hold with me here: Your goal is to paint a line across your paper that flows with paint. If your line is sticky and breaking, add more water. If you can’t control the line, add more paint. With properly mixed paint, you should be able to create a line that is at least 6 to 8 inches before returning for more paint. I often start with a mix of about 50% paint and 50% water and adjust as necessary.

Once you’ve got a long flowing line, experiment with the pressure you place on your brush. Applying lighter pressure will result in a thinner line; deeper pressure, a thicker line. Play with using only the tip of your brush verses the side; how you press the bristles onto your paper will change the thickness and shape of your line.

At its core, this exercise allows you to get a feel for the water-to-paint ratio (how much water you mix into your paint) and for brush handling, both of which are critical to watercolor painting. The proportion of water to paint not only affects the consistency of the paint, but also its value (how light or dark the color is). Brush pressure (from light to hard) and posture (how you position the bristles) allows you to create a variety of lines and strokes without ever changing your brush. This all sounds so simple, but it’s easier said than done. Give yourself grace if your lines are wonky and know that it gets a little easier each time you paint.

Congratulations! First exercise, done! Now, let’s move onto your first subject painting. I suggest starting with a simple, stand-alone subject like a whole orange or an egg. In this example, let’s move forward with an orange.

Lightly draw (or trace) a circle with your pencil.

With a large brush to help your strokes stay loose (I used my Artegría Quill Round Size 2), start with your lightest color. I used a light yellow to paint the entire orange. While that’s still wet, clean and lightly dry your brush and drag it across a small area on the upper left side of the orange to create a highlight; this process is called lifting.

Then, it’s time to add some dimension. Without letting your yellow dry completely, add a light orange color to the right side. Use curved strokes to give the illusion of roundness. Let this dry completely.

Now that our base layers are established, we can use darker colors to really bring this home. Use a medium value of orange to build up the shadow on the right side. Rinse your brush and smooth (or soften) the edge of your shadow with some light yellow, preserving your highlight. Let this dry.

Repeat this process, adding additional layers of color and blending the edges until you feel satisfied and then let it all dry.

Once dry, add a little horizontal oval about half a centimeter from the center top of your orange with light pressure. This will be your stem (technically the pedicel, but who’s keeping track of that!).

And with that, your orange is done! Celebrate! Be proud! No matter how your orange looks, remember that this is just your starting point. And in fact, the worse you think it looks now, the cooler it will be to see how far you’ve come as you continue to paint.

Every few months, recreate your first subject—this will become a great way to check on your painting progress! Look at how different your orange looks after 3 months, 6 months, 1 year, 2, 5, and beyond. And as you move forward, allow your style to evolve. Maybe one orange was painted completely wet-on-wet; maybe another has a leaf growing from the pedicel or a hard cast shadow below the base of the fruit. Play and have fun!

Experiment!

I’ve found that the longer I paint, the more I look at myself as a scientist. Each painting is an experiment: What happens if I do this? How will this react to that?

I’ve found that it helps take the pressure off when you look at each painting as an experiment. And you never learn more than when an experiment doesn’t go as expected. Rather than feeling like you need a “perfect” painting at the end of each session, going into painting with the mindset of experimentation means that even if your painting doesn’t turn out, that time wasn’t a “waste.” Instead, you’ve learned valuable information to apply to your next experiment.

So go forth and experiment! Let it go “wrong”—you might just learn something.