Painting without using white paint Print E-mail
This process must be handled with care. You must have your painting theme drawn out and ready. To know where the lightest color goes first, it is the most important part of the painting process. Once you paint over the white you cannot retrieve it again.
The transparent tones are made up of two important items, one being the white background and the other the paint medium. The more you increase the water the more transparent the color becomes, that is where the layering process is applied.
To understand watercolor you must understand the lack of white. If you do not you will work yourself into problem after problem and become frustrated. If you make the painting to dark in one area you will have to compensate by making the rest of the painting darker. Which leads us right to the concept of light to dark, that is the classical watercolor method, on which you start with a white paper and layer thin tones of color onto the surface all the while making sure you have left white areas on you paper. The darker tones are layered on one tone and then another until you come to the point where you lay your darkest tone, at the very end of the painting.
If you are into trying something exciting try “gouache” as your white, the approach is a lot different but the end result will look very much like leaving the paper white.