Shilpi Gupta
- Aug 20, 2021
- 4 min read

Choose the right Watercolor Art Supplies:

After you have selected your Watercolors and Watercolor Paper based on my previous tips, you might need to buy other art materials for painting. While some of these may not be essential initially, they will be required by you as you keep creating more and more art. Whereas some supplies like good quality brushes are essential from day one. Do refer these as and when you need them, but definitely read them now.

Brushes
File folders /Display books
Palette
Recommendations

Let's Go

Brushes: You don't need to buy a complete set of brushes to start off. Just buy the 3/4 standard size synthetic hair brushes.

A flat brush of around 3/4th to 1 inch
A thick round brush of around 8 to 10 size
A medium round brush of around 4 to 6 size
A fine thin brush of size 0 or 1

Then depending on the types of paintings you make, try different variants. Like a FAN BRUSH for making grass, a DEER FOOT BRUSH for making leaves etc. One more suggestion is - NEVER EVER throw your brushes. They can be reused. I will cover this topic in future as to how one can use old brushes and if required how to trim and reuse the old brushes too.

[Currently, I use Worrison brushes & Mont Marte detail brushes along with fan brushes, deer foot brush etc. Brustro set of 15 brushes is also recommended.]

File folders or display books: As the number of paintings increase, u might need plastic folders to manage them. These are very essential to manage your paintings as well as to protect your Watercolor paintings. They are available in various sizes like A4, A3 & come with different number of transparent plastic pouches / sleeves in each like 20, 40 etc. They are very handy to manage your paintings at one place & also to display your work physically to people without worrying about the paintings getting spoilt. Remember watercolor paintings have to be protected from any kind of water and moisture. I learnt this lesson the hard way when once during the rainy season my complete set of paintings in an A3 pad soaked some water from one edge. Luckily not too much of my paintings got spoilt. But after that day, I have never kept my paintings outside the plastic folders. So it is highly advisable to buy these as soon as you start creating multiple paintings. Once your painting is completely dry, just insert it into a sleeve of your folder. Dried watercolor paintings do not stick to the plastic sleeve (acrylic paintings do). You also get single pouches/ sleeves of A3 and A4 size, in case, you just want to give it a try first.

[I have 3 File folders of A3 size with 40 leaves each and believe me all of them are already full :)]

Palette: A palette for watercolor painting should definitely be of white color so that you can see the right shades. Don’t go for a small palette but a bigger size palette with multiple sections - so that you can keep little of each color in the palette ready. It is really handy if you have most of the shades available in your palette while painting. And the best part is that even if watercolors dry up, a little water can be used to reactivate them. Also if possible, buy a palette with a foldable cover. This helps in avoiding any dust collection on the colors and easy storage even if they're left unused for many days. A palette hardly wears out. So go for the best one right away.

[I currently have a palette with around 23 sections and 3 brush holders, and trust me, I am using all the sections. I suggest you go with the folding Brustro folding box 33 well Palette]

Recommendations: I have collated all these suggestions based on my personal experiences which I thought would help beginners. Some are tips which I felt would have helped me a lot if I knew them when I was a beginner. Some are points that I realized when I take workshops and students do not get the desired effect because their art materials were not right. Hence I started writing these tips so that it might be helpful to someone like you who has just started painting or are facing problems in a specific area.

[Please try to use these tips as much as you feel adequate]

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❣️To learn how to paint beautiful watercolor paintings, discover FREE Demo Tutorials as well as Upcoming Workshops and Advanced Watercolor Courses: