Watercolor Paints Basic Stage (pt.1)

Properties

Watercolor paints are pigments held together by a water soluble binder, along with additives and solvents.
(McArdle, no date)

Examples of binders are gum Arabic and honey. I’ve heard people say honey keeps the paint wet longer.

Let’s talk about transparency, opacity. Transparent watercolors allow the light to shine through to the watercolor paper and in turn, lets the white of the paper reflect back. The colors look clean, crisp, and appear to glow. Opaque colors block the light from coming through to the watercolor paper. Instead, the light bounces off the pigment. This can make the colors appear to look dull, even though some of the opaque's are quite vibrant in color.

Staining/Non-staining. Pigments staining watercolors will stain the paper even before the water has evaporated. So when you wipe the paint off, there will be a stain. With non-staining watercolors, the pigments will be lifted when and will not leave a stain. Sadly I do not have a staining color with me to show a comparison.

When painting with watercolor remember that it dries approximately 3 times lighter than the color you see when it is wet. It also depends on the type of pigment. Thus, you’ll need to work with your paints often to figure out how it dries.

The white parts of the watercolor painting aren’t actually white paint, it is from the white of the paper. Thus, you should always plan out where your lights in your paintings are. Usually, it's best to work from light to dark colors with watercolors. 

I usually tell myself, if I want to control where the pigment will go, I will control where the water will go as the pigment will follow the water. Lowkey water bender

References:

Heim, D.M. (1997) Properties of watercolor painting. Available at: http://www.watercolorpaintingandprojects.com/basics/properties.html (Accessed: 13 October 2016).



McArdle, T. (no date) Pigments through the ages - watercolor. Available at: http://www.webexhibits.org/pigments/intro/watercolor.html (Accessed: 13 October 2016).