As the wet on wet dries, the colors will continue to mesh together. If you see water and pigment pooling in certain areas, gently use the tip of a dry synthetic brush to pick up excess pigment. Next, create a seamless transition by adding dots of pigment at the line between colors if it is too much, you can always pull the color down. When needed, lead the pigment around to fill the area. Since there is a decent amount of water on the paper, when you lay down the color at the opposite end, you can let the colors mix themselves for the most part. If you want to turn the above color into a gradient, stop painting mid-way through the composition, and gather the second color. Optional: Sometimes, in order to see where she is painting, Emily will grab a dab of pigment to tint the water to the color she's using. Since there is a lot of pigment and water, you can switch to a semi-dry brush to 'lead' the pigment around the composition.

Next, grab a semi-wet brush, load it up with pigment, and lay down drops of pigment on the area. First, fill in the space with clean water. This is a much more loose way to apply your color because the pigment can have a bit of a mind of its own with this technique. The wet brush is used to control the color and pigment load, so you'll take that more pigmented, wet area and push around until you've completely covered the area. That gathered color is what you are going to 'lead' with. Pretty quickly, you'll see a thinned-out wash of color and an area that looks like a puddle of pigment. Emily demonstrates this by creating a flat plane of color on watercolor paper (or mixed media paper.) First, gather water on your paintbrush, grab the color of your choice, and lay down your pigment to start creating strokes.

2 Water Cups (1 for clean water, 1 for dirty water).

When using watercolors, it's not simply putting pigment on the page keep reading to see three wonderful techniques Emily uses! She has been able to lay down 20 layers of pigment with no buckling using Arteza’s paper. Emily prefers Arteza’s Watercolor Premium Artist Paint, Half Pans and Arteza's 100% cotton Expert Watercolor Pad. The number one rule of watercolors is having good watercolor paint, and good paper. Read about Emily's inspiration and artistic journey here. Emily Artful, a watercolor artist who is one of our Fuel Your Creativity artists, details three techniques for creating a perfect flat pane of color.

Emily artful art