Stretch the Paper

• Tape your sheet of watercolor paper to a board. Make sure to tape all four edges securely. Use a large flat brush to soak the paper with water. Allow to dry. The paper will be tightly stretched so that it won't buckle when you work on it.
  
  

Flat Wash

• Begin a flat wash by mixing sufficient pigment and water to cover the desired area. Raise your board a few inches at the back so that gravity helps the paint to move down the paper. Load a large flat brush with watercolor and start applying paint across the top edge of the area to be painted in a broad horizontal stripe. Once you have made one pass, pick up the bead of paint and move it back across the paper beneath the first stripe. Work quickly and pick up more paint from your palette as necessary as you move from side to side down the paper. The aim is to produce a solid block of color with no variation.
  
  

Graduated Wash

• A graduated wash using red and orange.Jupiterimages/Photos.com/Getty Images
  
  Work a graduated wash in the same way as a flat wash, except as you move down the page, start picking up more water on your brush than paint to produce a fading away of color. Try adding in a second color. For example, starting with blue and bringing in red, then yellow will give an interesting sunset effect.
  
  

Monotone

• This simple landscape uses just two colors in varying tones.Jupiterimages/Comstock/Getty Images
  
  Using only one color and flat washes in varying tones will create a simple landscape. Remember that the further away an object is, the paler it will look. This is called aerial perspective. Begin by drawing in a light horizon line in pencil. Then sketch in a simple mountain range. Lay a flat wash down for the sky, bringing it down as far as the mountains. Allow to dry or use a hairdryer to speed up the process. Using the same color but with more water, lay down flat washes on the most distant mountains. Strengthen the wash by adding more pigment and paint the nearer mountains. Let the work dry. Make the color stronger still and work from the foothills to the foreground, increasing the strength of the wash. These monotone landscapes can look very effective. Expand on this technique by adding in one other color.
  
  

Wet-in-Wet

• Wet-in-wet allows colors to flow together.Ablestock.com/AbleStock.com/Getty Images
  
  Wet-in-wet is the technique of dropping color onto wet paper. Soak the paper and, while it is wet, apply paint. You will see that the paint merges together in some places and dries with a hard edge in others. A really useful way to practice this is to paint lots of skies. Cloudy, stormy and rainy skies are perfect for wet-in-wet.
  
  

Creating Textures

• Start by using a paper towel to lift color off the paper while it is still wet. This is a good method to add fluffy clouds to your skies or patches of sunlight to wherever you need them. You also can use paper towel and sponges to apply paint. Dry brush technique involves picking up lots of color with very little water on your brush to produce a scratchy, broken brush-stroke that is useful for creating grass and other textures. Experiment with different size brushes, or try stippling (dabbing) paint onto the paper to get a dotted effect, called pointillism. Drop salt onto wet paint and allow to dry completely before brushing it away. Each salt grain absorbs the liquid paint around it, leaving an interesting little white mark. Combine these techniques with flat, graduated washes and wet-in-wet to add interest and improve your skills.