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Water colour is colour pigment ground in gum, usually gum arabic, and applied with brush and water to a painting surface, usually paper; the term also refers to a work of art executed in this medium. The pigment is normally transparent but can be made opaque by mixing with a whiting and in this form is known as body colour, or gouache. It can also be mixed with casein, a phosphoprotein of milk.

Watercolour can compete in range and quality with any other painting method. Transparent watercolour allows for a vibrance and luminosity in its washes and for a deft calligraphic brushwork that makes it a most alluring medium. There is one basic difference between transparent watercolour and all other heavy painting mediums, its transparency. The oil painter can paint one opaque colour over another until he has made his desired result. The whites are created with opaque white. The watercolourist’s approach is the complete. In essence, instead of adding in he leaves out. The white paper creates the whites. The darkest accents may be placed on the paper with the pigment as it comes out of the tube or with very little water mixed with it. Otherwise the colours are thinned with water. The more water in the wash, the more the paper changes the colours; for example, vermilion, a warm red, will eventually turn into a cool pink as it is diluted with more water.

The dry-brush technique, the use of the brush containing pigment but little water, dragged over the coarse surface of the paper—creates various granular effects similar to those of a crayon drawing. Whole compositions can be produced in this way. This technique also may be brushed over darker washes to enliven them.

Three hundred years before the golden age of late 18th-century English watercolourists, Albrecht Dürer had predicted their approach to transparent colour washes in a groundbreaking series of plant studies and panoramic landscapes. Until the emergence of the English school, however, watercolour became a medium merely for colour tinting outlined drawings or, combined with opaque body colour to produce effects similar to gouache (see below Gouache) or tempera, was used in preparatory sketches for oil paintings.

The chief pracitioners of the English method were Thomas Girtin, John Sell Cotman, John Robert Cozens, Richard Parkes Bonington, David Cox, and Constable. Their contemporary J.M.W. Turner, however, true to his unorthodox genius, added white to his watercolour and used rags, sponges, and knives to create stunning impressions of light and texture. Victorian watercolourists, such as Birket Foster, used a time consuming method of colour washing a monochrome underpainting, similar to the tempera-oil technique. Following the direct, vigorous watercolours of the French Impressionists and Postimpressionists, however, the medium was established in Europe and America as an expressive visual medium in its own right. Notable 20th-century watercolourists have been Wassily Kandinsky, Paul Klee, Dufy, and Georges Rouault; the U.S. artists Thomas Eakins, Maurice Prendergast, Charles Burchfield, John Marin, Lyonel Feininger, and Jim Dine; and the English painters John and Paul Nash, Eric Ravilious, Edward Bawden, Edward Burra, and Patrick Procktor.

In the “pure” watercolour technique, often referred to as the English method, no white or other opaque colour is applied, colour intensity and tonal depth being built up by successive, transparent washes on wet paper. Parts of white paper are left untouched to represent white objects and to create effects of reflected light. These flecks of white paper create the sparkle characteristic of pure watercolour. Tonal gradations and soft, atmospheric qualities are formed by staining the paper when it is very wet with differing proportions of pigment. Sharp accents, lines, and coarse textures are introduced when the paper has dried. The paper should be of the type sold as “handmade from rags”; this is generally thick and grained. Cockling is avoided when the surface dries out if the dampened paper has been first stretched across a special frame or held in position during painting by an edging of adhesive tape.

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