Many people consider watercolor an unforgiving medium. It can be difficult to control, due to factors, such as, skill level or even the temperature and humidity levels that day. So, painting the sky in watercolor may feel intimidating. It felt that way to me, anyway. I still have nightmares about that dreaded “cauliflower” effect, which can happen when there’s too much water, causing your paint to sort of blossom into a cauliflower shape; distorting whatever you intended to paint in the first place. 

But, with a little practice, working with watercolor tends to get easier and easier as we begin to get a handle on a good ratio of water to color (more on that in a future post). In addition to balance between water and color, it is important to keep the brush moving across the paper without spending too much time in one spot! One of the most common watercolor mistakes is “overbrushing” – the act of going back into the same spot multiple times with more paint and/or water. I still do this from time to time, no matter how many times I tell myself to move on. I suppose we go back to the same spot to try to improve it, but we are probably better off just taking one shot at it and letting the watercolor magic happen on its own. Who knows, we may end up with a “happy accident”.  

However, there are times when just one pass at the whole thing leaves the painting flat and lacking values between lights and darks. If done carefully and skillfully, watercolor paintings can be enhanced or corrected by going back into some areas (while leaving other areas untouched) with a darker color or by softening hard edges with clean water. For example, when painting clouds, we do not want to end up with a hard line between a cloud and the sky color because clouds tend to have a soft, puffy, and almost fuzzy feel to them.  In the following video tutorial, I’ll cover the basics of painting clouds in watercolor. I hope you find this demonstration helpful!