The Very FIRST Watercolor Lesson for Beginners | Watercolor Painting for Beginners - Lesson 1

Welcome to my YouTube channel. In this video I have a complete beginner watercolor tutorial. So you've got your watercolor supplies and you're like, what do I do now? Well this video is for you. Before we get started I'm going to first go over all of my watercolor supplies that I am using for this lesson. And I do have a video all about beginner watercolor supplies so you can go ahead and check that out by clicking the link in the description below or the card above. So here I'm using a sketchbook and it's a beginner watercolor sketchbook. When I first started learning watercolors I started out with a sketchbook like this. Actually this is the exact sketchbook that I learned watercolors in. So I do suggest to complete beginners to maybe start with a sketchbook. This way you can just play around in it, get to know your paints and your brushes and you won't have to waste nice watercolor paper. If you want something a little bit fancier and higher quality you can get an Etcher sketchbook. So this is my Etcher sketchbook here and it does have higher quality paper. But because this lesson is all about making brush marks and swatches with your paints and getting to know your brushes more I decided to not use my nice sketchbook or paper. And the brush I plan on using for this lesson is the size 8 round brush from Princeton Neptune. These Princeton Neptune brushes are the brushes that I started out with when I first was learning watercolors. So I highly suggest getting these brushes because they're good quality but they're also affordable. I have two jars of water here. One is to clean my brushes. So as you can see it's kind of dirty. And then I have this clean jar of water. The clean jar of water is to use this water in my paints and this is just to clean my brushes in. I have paper towel here. I like to reuse my paper towels until they just are not usable anymore. So I'm going to reuse this paper towel here and the paints that I plan on using are my Woodlands paints. This is one of my most favorite pan sets. If you don't have a lot of colors to paint with and you want to purchase a pan set that has all of the colors you need you might want to look into this Classics pan set from Art Philosophy. This just has basically all of the basic watercolor colors. This beginner watercolor lesson is for the complete beginner. Someone who recently got their watercolor supplies and don't really know anything about watercolor. So the very first thing I did when I first got my watercolor paints was that I made swatches of the new paints that I got. So we are going to do that first right now. I am just taking my watercolor brush here, my size 8 round brush from Princeton Neptune. I'm dipping it in my clean water jar here and I'm just going to work through all of these paints here. So I'm wetting this paint first and I'm going to work this way. So I'm wetting this. I'm not going to use the palette here. I'm just going to wet this paint like this and you want to add enough water so that you have a good amount of paint on your brush. And then you just lay it down on your paper like this. And then I like to make gradients with my watercolor paints. So you might want to make kind of like a square first and then dip your brush in your dirty water jar to clean it. You don't have to clean it all the way. So here, yeah, I'm just dipping it in my brush, dabbing it, wait, dipping it in my watercolor jar, dabbing it on my paper towel, dipping it now in my clean water and then you can kind of create a gradient of this color. This way you can see the shades that you can get with this color. So from the lightest shade to the darkest shade. So now I'm cleaning my brush completely, okay, because now we're going to swatch the next color and then I'm dabbing my brush in my clean water. Now I'm going to take this next color and again I'm adding enough water so that there's a lot of paint in my brush. So again I'm kind of making like a square like this and then I'm cleaning my brush now in my dirty water jar and then I'm dipping my brush in my clean jar. Now I'm dragging this color across my paper and then you can see this color kind of bleeding this way. Alright, and then you want to clean your brush completely and then move on to the next. This lesson is also great because it just helps you kind of also learn how much water to use. So for darker shades you want to use less water. For lighter shades of color you want to use more water. We'll go more into how much water to use with your paints in later lessons. This lesson today is just a very basic lesson. It's nothing too crazy. We're just kind of playing around with our brushes and paints. So yeah, I'm cleaning my brush, taking some clean water again. This is actually one of my most favorite colors in this paint set. This is Foxberry color. It's so pretty. By the way, I forgot to tell you that all of the supplies I am using are linked below in the description for you if you'd like to check them out on Amazon. So when you first get watercolors it might be overwhelming because you might be like okay how much water do I use, how do I mix colors, how do I build up the layers and it might be overwhelming. But just know that it gets easier and you just have to practice and be patient with yourself as you learn watercolor. If you're new to my channel, I do go live on Fridays. Every Friday morning at 10am EST I go live here on YouTube for a watercolor tutorial. So if you haven't joined one of those lives yet or if you want to check out watercolor tutorials that you might like to learn, I will link to them below in the description This color here is like one of my most favorite colors ever. Really pretty, rich blue. So one of my tips for watercolor beginners is to not, what am I trying to say, is to wait for your paint to fully dry before you continue adding more layers to your painting. So that's one of the big struggles I had when I was a beginner. I would continue to work on an area over and over and not letting it completely dry. So that's one of the big things that beginners struggle with. And then I have some paint here in this yellow green. So I'm just wetting my brush here and I'm kind of like dragging out this color, this green that's in my yellow and I'm dabbing it on my paper towel here. Green and yellow paint is not really a good thing. And then one of the other beginner struggles and questions that beginners have is what about white? The white of your paper is your white. So that's why when you paint with watercolor, you want to work from light to dark. You want your first layer to be your lightest layer. And then as you add layers, you can have them be a little darker. And then watercolor is transparent. So the more layers you add, the darker the area will be. So you always want to start very light, as light as you can. So that means your first layer, you'll probably use a lot of water in your paint because the more water you use in your paint, the lighter your color will be. I'm cleaning my brush, then adding some clean water to my brush. Alright, we have one more color and then we will do some brush exercises. Exercises. I can't say that word very good. Oh yeah, this green is just beautiful. I'm dragging this color. Now that you've kind of swatched your colors and you can see all of the different shades of the color you get, depending on how much water you use, you can now play around with your brushes. You want to get out all of the brushes you have. So I'll use these ones. You just want to kind of play around with all of the brushes you have. So I have this brush here. This is part of the Princeton Neptune watercolor set that I first started out with when I got my watercolor brushes, or when I first began to learn watercolor. I think the set was these here, and maybe it was this one. So yeah, this is the beginner set that I recommend beginners get, or choosing like three different kinds of brushes, small to large. So you just want to start with one brush for now, and then you want to dip your brush in your clean water and just pick a color. I'm going to pick this mist color because it's my favorite color, I think, from this pan set. And then you just want to play around. This is what I did when I first started learning. I just kind of got out my brushes and just played around with them. So you can just barely touch your paper like this, and then press down, then press back up, and just kind of twist your brush, swirl it like this. You can also get more paint and maybe dab it in your brush marks and just play around with it. This is supposed to be for fun. You can also try other colors. I am going to try this Foxberry color now, and then just kind of see what you can do with each brush, kind of see what it's capable of. So this brush, I can make little marks like this, I can be like this, it looks like this brush could paint some leaves maybe. Although I recommend round brushes for leaves, which is this shape. And then yeah, just go through your brushes, make different marks. I'm going to try my size 8 round brush now, and just try to make a leaf shape. We can just barely touch the paper like this, press down, press up. You can also maybe see what it looks like if you add another color. So what if I added some of this, it's called Pond color in here. Dab that in, see what that looks like. Yeah, just play around. This is exactly what I did when I first started. Yeah, just see what you can do with each brush. A brush like this is really good for large areas, like washes. Like a large piece of paper and you want to wet it all and then drop in your paint, this is the brush to do that. So I think I'm going to kind of, I'm just wetting my brush in my clean jar, and I'm kind of dragging it on my paper, and then I'm going to take this green here and just kind of dab this in. See what it looks like. This brush I can do this, which is cool. I can do this, then I have this teeny tiny brush, this is my size zero round brush. This one is great for details. Remember that you can press lightly on your paper, then you can press down and see what other shapes you can make, then press up again, down, up. I hope that you found this super beginner lesson fun and helpful, and I hope to see you in the next lesson, which is all about how much water do I use with my watercolor paints. And don't forget to check out my free beginner watercolor class in the description below, as well as any other videos that you might find helpful. Thank you for watching, and I'll see you in the next tutorial.