“Washing” is a technique commonly used with watercolors. You start by wetting the area of the paper that will be covered with the wash. Then mix up enough pigment to fill the area and apply the pigment starting at the top and overlapping on any horizontal bands. The wash is then left to dry. Don’t work it as it will even itself out as it dries. The technique called “dropping in color” is a process where an additional color is added to a wet area of the painting which is then allowed to naturally bleed without any interference by the artist. The results are unpredictable with interesting color gradations.

“Glazing” is a technique similar to a wash, but instead of application to a wet surface a thin layer of pigment is applied to a dry surface over washes that already exist. It is used to adjust tone and color on a wash, and it is applied in layers until the desired affect is reached. Just be sure that each layer is dry before applying the next layer. Auroline, cobalt blue and permanent rose are good transparent pigments to glaze with.

The “wet in wet” is a technique where you fill your brush with a very wet pigment that is then applied to a wet paper. It can be applied on top of existing washes that have dried. Just dampen these areas with a large brush. This technique provides soft subtle marks that are great for background areas. The “dry brush” is opposite to the “wet in wet” technique. The brush is filled with pigment with the use of minimal water and then it is dragged across the dry paper, producing a very crisp mark with a hard edge. It is an excellent technique for front work and points of interest.

“Lifting off” is an interesting technique where the pigment is dissolved and lifted off after it has dried. Just wet the area you want to lift and then use a tissue to blot the pigment off. Reds, yellows, and blues can be more difficult to lift. Watercolor painting is an interesting form of artistic expression and it’s a common choice for beginning artists.

Painting artists have been using oil paints for hundreds of years. Actually, they have been seen from as early as 13th century in England, where they used oil paints for simple decoration. In the early years, however, many artists preferred to use paints called tempera instead on using oil paints as they were able to dry faster than oil paint. In the 15th century, Flemish artists came up with the idea of mixing oil paint and tempera. Nevertheless, it was not until the 17th century that pure oil paints became a more usual art medium.

Oil painting dries slowly than any other forms of paint because they are made of small particles of pigments that are balanced in a drying oil. While some of the artists might find this slow drying quality troublesome, most artists believe oil paints to be a required type of art media that must be taught to every art student. This is partly because of the many oil painting reproduction, which have been developed using oil paints.

There are several advantages of using oil paints, aside from its robust quality. Oil paints could as well be left open for a long duration. In fact, oil paints could regularly be left opened to air for up to several weeks without drying. This characteristic makes it possible for an artist to work on a painting over different sessions with no fear of the painting drying up too early. Of course, this attribute could be seemed at as a disadvantage by some artists, because it takes few weeks for the project to be completed and the slow drying process could make it difficult to move on to the next stage of the project.

Oil paints are as well outstanding for blending with surrounding paint. When blended on canvas, oil paints are able of creating artistic brush strokes and other blends, which are not possible with other forms of paint. For some artists, though, this advantage to oil paints could be viewed as a disadvantage, as it is possible to by chance blend colors while painting that were not meant to be blended.