Part of knowing how to paint with watercolors is knowing that painting with watercolors is a lot less forgiving than painting with acrylics or oils, but the painting process is also less expensive and can create a wide variety of painting effects via the dilution of paint in water. Linen paper and other watercolor specific types of canvas and the paints themselves are inexpensive, just don't try to start with your child's watercolors from school.

For the beginning artist, learning the tricks of medium is one of the first goals. With watercolor painting, the first trick is to understand how the ratio of water to paint will impact color saturation and the overall look of your painting. Set aside an hour or so to play with your paints and paper, trying some of the most common watercolor techniques.

Watercolor artists have many options for controlling the amount of water used in their paintings. The more water used, the more the paint will flow and fill the pourous surfaces of the paper. A great way to control this initially is to paint on dry paper. The paint will flow very little to fill in the paper and will essentially stay where the artist puts it. This a great option for putting strong definitive lines in your painting.

To get the look that most watercolor paintings are famous for, the artist uses wet paint on wet paper. Again, the most important learning objective for the watercolor artist is to control the way the water causes the paint to flow. The more water involved in the process, the softer the brush strokes will appear and the more distance the color will travel from the point of origin.

Use a clean brush to evenly coat the paper with water. Be careful not to oversaturate the paper. Paper that is too wet will not accept paint. Using a wide brush, begin at the top of the paper and use even, horizontal strokes to apply color. Be sure to keep the paper at a consistent level of dampness and use similar amounts of paint with each stroke.