How to Use the Glazing Technique in Watercolor Painting

You've probably already heard of the artistic technique known as glazing that's used when painting in oils and acrylics. But what about watercolors? Can you use glazing with watercolor paints?

The answer is yes. Although glazing is mostly associated with oils and acrylics, it can also be done working with watercolors. However, there are differences because most watercolor pigments are transparent and not opaque as oils and acrylics.

What is Glazing?

Glazing is a technique where thin, transparent washes of color are laid on each other in consecutive layers of dried colors, allowing underlying colors to shine through the paint. Think of it as laying multiple sheets of transparent colored tissue papers. Because a glaze is transparent it lets light pass through it, as well as be reflected off the underlying color. The result is a painting that is not only transparent and rich in color, but is also glowing.

In watercolor, glazing is often used in painting landscapes to depict an illusion of distance hills or skies, including space and light. Glazing is also done to adjust color and can either darken or change a color's hue or chroma. It's also used to produce a smooth homogenous color surface to brighten (or darken) an entire watercolor painting. (See adjacent watercolor painting of a barn scene that's "warmed over" with a transparent pale yellow pigment.) What's more, it can be controlled, producing a gradual transition from light to dark (or one hue to another.)

Use Transparent Colors

If you've ever worked with watercolor paints, you already know that some pigments are more transparent than others. The watercolor pigments that are more opaque won't work well for glazes. In fact opaque colors (such as the earth colors and cadmiums) look like chalk when dry

With transparent watercolors, you can see the white paper beneath the paint, whereas opaque paints saturate the paper so the whiteness of the paper is covered. A few transparent watercolor paints include pigments such as alizarin crimson, burnt sienna, yellow ochre and sap green. To discover which paints are transparent, test each paint on a piece of white paper.