How to Dry Brush Paint with Watercolors©

This week’s “Art Only Spoken Here” question asks, “What is dry brush painting and how can I use it in watercolor painting?”

Excellent question! Being the exact opposite of wet on wet water color technique, dry brush painting allows you to basically paint “outside” the lines creating a path of light even on cloudy days should you be outside doing plein air painting.

You load your brush with pigment and not too much water and you drag it completely over your dry paper and you will see that the marks you create with this dry brush technique are hard edged and very crisp. These strokes tend to come forward in your painting and are usually applied around the center of interest in your painting. However, do remember as you blend your colors in the background of your painting to use your darkest colors or hues on the edges of your painting in order to create depth perception.

The dry brush watercolor is truly a very unconventional art technique since it creates painting effects that are unique and not produced by other methods. It will also require a lot of practice, perseverance and patience to develop this technique so you will find yourself experimenting quite a bit.

You will soon discover that your paintings will appear to have a superior brilliance as they appear with higher color saturation, more vivid colors and your path of light will have a better contract of dark and light.

When you attempt dry brush water color painting you must have heavy paper stock or board as opposed to lighter paper or board since you do not want your paper to warp.

It is also important that your paper must be acid free archival quality containing no lignin. Lignin is the cause of your paintings becoming brittle and yellowing over time with exposure to light.

I start with a pencil drawing and I do not worry about the lines showing through my watercolor applications, matter of fact it often enhances my watercolors. I prefer a graphite pencil H since softer graphite pencils will dirty my picture and harder ones will usually not be visible.

I use watercolor paints packaged in tubes instead of dry pan paints because the color is all ready moistened to the right consistency. There are lots of brands out there and I seem to prefer Winsor & and Newtonpaints even though you may want to practice with cheaper ones. I squeeze the color I want onto my palette and using a flat brush I wet my brush in clean water until the bristles are thoroughly wet. Shaking out the excess water I now dab my damp brush into the color I want to work with and drag my brush over the area I want to paint. I often hold a hair drying in the other hand, set at minimum speed and have it running so it immediately dries my paint.

Use an easy subject when you start to experiment with dry brush watercolor painting and do not make large paintings as you need to have control until you have mastered this technique.

This technique is easier to show than to talk about and if you look in the event section of the newspaper you will see that I offer free art instruction in Avalon Stained Glass School & Creativity Center’s Friday Night Club so you may want to come to one of these sessions and learn exactly how to do this.

May the Creative Force be With You….



Arlene Wright-Correll

If your birthday falls between July 1^st, & July 31^st stop in for a visit at Avalon Stained Glass School & Creativity Center during our business hours and pick up your free birthday gift. There is nothing to buy and these birthday gifts will range from $10.00 to $150.00 so it might be your lucky day. Questions? Just email me at askarlene@scrtc.com