Learning to Paint, Starting from Three Primary Colours

Value means how light or dark a colour is, whatever its hue. Plenty of beginner paintings look flat because the colours are right while the values are almost identical across the whole surface. The eye reads form from contrast in light and dark first and from hue second, which is why experienced painters give value practice the same weight as colour practice.

The exercise is simple. Draw five boxes in a row, fill the first with white and the last with the darkest colour you can mix, then fill the three in between with evenly spaced steps. Once five steps feel easy, stretch the scale to seven or nine. Repeat it with a single hue, for example blue lightened with white in one direction and darkened with its complement in the other.

Two quick checks work in the middle of any painting. Squint until the details blur and only the light and dark shapes remain. Or photograph the canvas and switch the image to black and white on your phone. If the main subject melts into the background in that grey version, adjust the values and keep the colour choices as they are. Learners who check this way soon begin to see a subject as an arrangement of light and dark shapes from the sketch onward.

With watercolour, the amount of water decides almost everything. More water gives a pale, transparent colour, and less water gives a strong one. Because the paint is transparent, the brightest parts of a painting come from white paper left untouched. Those areas need planning at the sketch stage, since colour that has soaked in is hard to lift back to white. The working order follows from this: light colours first, dark ones later.

Four basic techniques are practised in sequence. A flat wash fills one area with an even colour from a loaded brush, stroked from top to bottom with the paper tilted slightly so the wet bead travels down evenly. A graded wash adds water with each stroke so the colour fades from strong to pale. Wet-in-wet starts by dampening the paper, then dropping colour in and letting it spread softly, which suits skies and backgrounds. Wet-on-dry lays colour over a dry layer for crisp edges, used for detail and glazing.

The most common source of trouble is the paper. Thin paper buckles when wet and colour collects in the dips, whereas heavy watercolour paper stays flatter. The second is timing: touching an area while it is half dry leaves a blotch with a frilly edge, often called a bloom or cauliflower. Learning to wait, and to read the difference between a surface that still shines wet and one that has gone matt, is part of watercolour practice in its own right.

A sketch made before painting works as a map. It fixes where the objects sit, where the horizon falls and how sizes compare. It only needs to be faint, drawn with a lightly held pencil or with thinned paint in a neutral colour, so the lines vanish under the next layer.

A five-to-ten-minute gesture sketch is really an exercise for the eyes. Look at the object for longer than you look at the paper, then catch its direction and big shapes with quick lines: a circle for fruit, a box for a container, a slanted line for the back of a chair. Leave the details out on purpose. A few gesture sketches at the start of a session also warm up the hand before the brush comes out.

For proportion, divide the canvas or paper into four quadrants with faint lines and check which quadrant each part of the object lands in. Another method is sighting: stretch your arm straight, hold the pencil upright and compare the length of one part of the object with another. That habit of comparing is what keeps the apple the right size next to the glass beside it.

Choose a single object with a clear shape for the first studies, say one apple or one cup on a table under one lamp. Groups of objects can follow once a single one feels easy to map, and a successful sketch usually shows few lines and little erasing.

A still life is the most comfortable place to study light, because the objects stay put and the lamp can be adjusted. One light source from the upper side gives the easiest form to read. Set a single fruit or glass on a plain cloth, switch on a desk lamp from one direction, and turn off any other lights that blur the shadows.

Every rounded object shows several zones of light. The lit side faces the lamp. The form shadow sits on the side turned away and darkens gradually around the curve. The cast shadow is thrown onto the table, darkest where the object touches the surface and softer as it stretches away. Light bouncing off the table often lifts the lower edge of the form shadow slightly. The highlight is the small brightest spot on the surface.

The painting order follows the logic of layers: shadows and middle tones first, then the lit side, and the highlight at the very end. One or two highlight spots are enough to keep them strong. For shiny objects such as a glass or bottle, paint what you see inside the object, the reflections and the bent shapes of the background, and the look of glass emerges from that arrangement of light and dark. Painting the same object again with the lamp moved shows how the whole map of shadows shifts.

Gesso is a white ground brushed onto raw canvas, heavy paper or wood so paint grips evenly and colours look brighter. One or two coats go on with a wide flat brush, first in one direction and then across, with about an hour of drying between coats and around 24 hours before painting. Ready-made canvases from art shops usually come primed already, so this step can be skipped when using one.

Varnish is the final protective coat. It shields the surface from dust and ultraviolet light and evens out the sheen. A fully layered acrylic painting needs about two weeks to dry before varnishing, because moisture trapped under the varnish can turn the surface cloudy. Test the varnish on a practice canvas first, and store finished paintings upright in a dry place away from direct sunlight.

Learners who later move to oils meet a different layering rule called fat over lean. Lower layers are kept lean, with more solvent, and each layer above carries a little more oil. That keeps the upper layers flexible while the lower ones cure, so the surface does not crack. Oils also call for a dedicated solvent, a separate rinse jar, brushes kept apart from those used with water-based paint, and a well-ventilated room. That is why oils are usually taken up once colour mixing and brushwork feel familiar in acrylic or watercolour.