Painting with watercolors is an activity that has spanned human history. What was once applied with fingers and bones upon the dark walls of ancient caves is now done just about anywhere, and with better lighting. Though techniques have evolved since ancient times the basic idea is the same - to create paintings with water-soluble pigment. This guide will give you some tips on choosing your supplies and will also explain the basic technique so that you can begin creating your own watercolor paintings.

Choosing Your Supplies: Brushes, Paint and Paper

Brushes

When choosing your watercolor brushes there are a few things you should consider. First you should decide what price range you want to stay in. Top quality brushes can be quite expensive. Brushes made with synthetic bristles are a suitable and economical option for beginners. You just want to make sure that your brushes don't have any bent bristles, and that they are soft so that they will not scratch the surface of your watercolor paper. If you plan on painting something with fine details, a pointed-round brush would work well for you.

The flattened, round head of the filbert brush is ideal for painting landscapes. For large background areas, a mop brush, with a large full head of soft bristles, is perfect. Even if you don't know what you will be painting, having a pointed round brush, a filbert brush and a mop brush will allow you to begin painting all sorts of things.

Paint

Choosing your watercolor paint shouldn't be too difficult. Watercolors come in professional grade and student grade and most art supply stores carry both. Student grade paint contains less pigment, which results in a more muted painting and it will also fade faster over time.

Despite these drawbacks, most student grade paint is perfect to begin painting with. However, if you do purchase the more expensive professional grade paint – you will easily be able to appreciate the rich depth and color saturation of high quality paint. You can choose to buy individual tubes of paint or you may decide to purchase a boxed package. Either way you should supply yourself with the basic primary colors: red, blue and yellow, as well as some earth tones, such as brown and green. It is also a good idea to have a tube of white paint, which is ideal for mixing up lighter shades of color.

Paper

When choosing watercolor paper you want to be sure to choose a pad labeled cold press. Cold press paper will have a bit of texture to the surface and is perfectly suited for watercolor paint. Some pads are made with wax around all four edges, requiring you to slide a blade between the pages to separate them. The advantage to using this type of pad is that it keeps the wet paper from shrinking as it dries, which would cause your painting to warp.