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“Art is a language,” Children’s book illustrator E.B. Lewis told a roomful of illustrators, aspiring and professional. What is a language, Lewis asked. “Letters of the alphabet that join together to form words, then paragraphs. And finally stories and jokes,” he answered his own question. And the mark of fluency? Maybe not what you think. “Telling [...]

Q: For someone interested in learning about how to get started working with watercolor, the way you guys do... where would you recommend one start?

A: Here's how I got started with watercolor. (I wanted to get into children's illustration and that's why I decided to torture myself). With hope, Wes and Stacy will chime in with some words that are actually helpful.

I went out and bought a pad of cheap 140 lb watercolor paper and a half-dozen or so W&N tubes. I had no idea what to paint. This coincided with my (I think) suggestion on the Wisenheimer cartoonist board to do a cartoon postcard swap. I decided to do all my postcards, some 40 of them, with the watercolors. I did all kinds of stuff, just experimenting and not worrying too much about it. The result was that I got a lot of experimenting out of the way, learned a little about how the paint behaves, what the brushes do, whether to ink first or after, etc. I think otherwise I would have tried to sit down and do a "real" painting and gotten very discouraged.

I also subscribed for a while to The Artist's Magazine, which I recommend. I see that they now make a magazine called Watercolor Magic which you can get a free issue of at their site.

(I had scanned in several of the postcards before mailing them and I found them on my old hard drive. Here they are, warts and all.)

Stacy:One day, I decided I wanted to do watercolor illustrations, so like Ted, I just jumped into it. I got some tubes of watercolor & some watercolor pans and a decent watercolor block and just started reading and studying from a step-by-step watercoloring book I got from the bookstore.
Eventually, I felt I knew how the paint was going to behave and I put the book away and started developing my own watercoloring style.
I think every artist has a watercoloring style, just like they have a drawing style. Sometimes, I'll see an illustrator do a drawing and the watercoloring style just kills the drawing. Your watercoloring style has to compliment your drawing style.

My advice is to read up on watercoloring, look at the step-by-step books, as Ted suggested-read some watercoloring magazines and DON'T be afraid to start putting paint to paper. Start with some watercolor postcards if you like, but don't be afraid...dive right in!