Lets test the following types of washes together. You will need a separate sheet of paper divided into several sections.
Flat wash
A flat wash has consistent color and value throughout.
Prepare color or physical mix on your palette by dampening the paint and using a separate mixing brush as necessary. Once you begin a wash, it will be hard to stop so have everything ready beforehand. You may wish to incline your board slightly so the wash runs downward.
Begin with a big saturated brush at the top of your designated area and apply the color in broad overlapping strokes. Each stroke should fall slightly below the previous one (do not go back into an area once its painted). Pick up the paint with each stroke and keep it moving either from left to right or both directions.
Once a wash is done, leave it alone.
Graded wash
A graded wash increases or decreases in saturation and value.
Mix a light, middle, and dark tone of your color in different trays.
Apply the paint in the same fashion as above- gradually transitioning from dark to light down the sheet (this may require turning the paper upside down if a light/dark wash is required). For a more even wash, you may dampen your paper before you apply the wash- and then use slightly more paint to compensate for the desaturation. Keep the wash moving, and again don?t touch it while it?s drying.
Graded two-color wash
A smooth blending between two colors in a large area is a useful tool in your painting.
Premix your two principle colors as well as a transition color and follow the previous methods of application. An angled board is especially useful here.
Variegated wash
A variegated wash is a loose wet wash where colors intermingle on the painting. Premix your desired colors in separate areas of the palette. Dampen the entire paper and paint one area up to the boundary of the next. Allow the colors to diffuse into one another. The wetter the paper, the more there will be blending. The drier the paper, the more distinct brushmarks and colors will appear.
Other applications
Although we can think of a wash as a technique for broad application, this is really the tool we use when painting smaller sections as well. Consider any area where we increase the saturation and value of a color- it's basically a wash on a smaller scale.
Wet-on-wet Painting
Up to now, we have thought about applying color in sections in terms of distinct layers. Whether applying a glaze or a flat wash (the same technique on different scales), we use one color to cover an area. A variegated wash on the other hand does something different by allowing colors to intermingle.
Wet-on-wet is a means of applying color into a wet area. Depending on the degree of wetness of the paper and the saturation of color, this effect will produce varying results. Try the following experiment.
Wet a long section of paper and then apply paint dabs with a saturated color after different amounts of time.
Immediate
20 seconds
40 seconds
60 seconds.
With wet paper, the paint spreads quickly and diffusely. With slightly damp paper, the paint spreads more slowly. Even when the paper is still barely wet, we can use this technique to drop in color with soft edges.
Another way to use this technique is in conjunction with a flat wash (instead of wetting the paper with clean water).Also, you may apply several different colors mixed previously on your palette, which will then combine on your paper. It's another form of the variegated wash.
As always, do not go back in an area once its drying to make corrections. In general we can apply the rule that we always work from light to dark (so that I cannot apply a diluted wash of light blue to a drying section of dark green).
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