Watercolor Painting (11 years & above)
with Walaa Ashraf

Watercolor painting is an art form that creates artistic representations, usually on paper, using pigments that are water-soluble. Other forms of painting use oil soluble paints or dry pigment in sticks such as pastels. Watercolor painting is familiar to most of us as the children's activity performed with boxed sets of color pans; the colored blocks are swiped with a wet brush and the pigment transfers itself to the watered brush and thence to the paper. Adult watercolorists use different paints, however. The children's versions do not contain the amount of pigment needed to achieve the effects available with 'artist grade' watercolor paints.Watercolor painting employs a type of palette specific to the form - typically a large flat piece of plastic with depressions around the perimeter. Watercolor paint sold in tubes is squeezed into these depressions and allowed to dry. This is the equivalent of the children's set of dried colored cubes. Some artists use 'fresh' watercolor paint directly from the tube and do not allow it to dry. They claim the colors are fresher if the paint is not allowed to dry before it reaches the paper.