How do you add white details to a watercolor painting?
While there is such a thing as white watercolor paint, it’s not as simple as adding white highlights like you would with acrylic or oil paint. You cannot use white watercolor to make an area white on your painting.
Watercolor relies heavily on the paper’s white for highlights, but there are many easy ways to effectively add white to your paintings.
Check Out My Favorite Art Supplies & More Here!
Some ways of adding white to watercolors look more natural than others. How you add white will be purely up to your artistic preference.
Below I go over several different ways to add white to watercolor paintings along with my go-to way to do so. Let’s get into it!
How To Create White Accents In Watercolor Art
Leave White Space
This is the simplest way to keep those white highlights in your painting, but it is not always the easiest.
Masking Fluid
If you aren’t confident in leaving white space, use masking fluid! This ensures the area will stay white even if you accidentally paint over it.
If watercolor is your main medium, I suggest having a bottle of masking fluid because it comes in handy.
White Gel Pen
A white gel pen is a simple and efficient way to add white. This is good to do for highlights, not necessarily large areas of white.
A white gel pen is so easy to control. You can confidently add highlights to wherever you need them.
In this painting, I used a white gel pen for white details in the water.
Shop My Artwork Here
Oil Pastel
Oil pastel is a unique way to add white highlights to a watercolor painting. I’ve used this technique several times because I enjoy using oil pastels. It’s not for everyone, but a white oil pastel can create interesting textured lines on a watercolor painting.
In this mixed-media painting, I painted the background in watercolor and then drew the daisies in oil pastel.
Gouache
Gouache is very similar to watercolor, but it’s more opaque while watercolor is transparent. White gouache is an effective way to add white to a watercolor painting.
I’ve also used gouache for stars in watercolor paintings. I dip my brush in watered-down gouache and tap it against my hand so the paint flies off the brush.
Colored Pencil
Colored pencils are a great way to add white details to your paintings.
I love using Prisma Colored Pencils!
Acrylic Paint
You can also use acrylic paint to add white details. Acrylic paints are much thicker than watercolors. It depends on what kind of art piece you’re making and the look you’re going for, but using acrylic paint is possible.
I’ve used acrylic paint on some pet portrait paintings I’ve done, usually on the whiskers so they pop nicely. 🙂
My Favorite Way To Add White In My Watercolor Paintings
My go-to way to add white accents is not by leaving white space. I like to add white highlights at the very end of the painting and I do so with white gel pens.
Ever since I discovered these perfect white gel pens it made it a breeze to add highlights to my watercolor paintings.
Depending on what piece I’m making, other techniques I enjoy are oil pastels, masking fluid, and colored pencils. But I’m always reaching for those handy white gel pens. 🙂
Creating Highlights In Watercolor Art
As you can see from the many options on how to add white details in watercolor listed above, it depends on your preference. Many artists use different techniques to create white accents in watercolor paintings.
Check out some more art blog posts here:
Using Oil Pastels On Watercolor Paper
Thanks so much for reading! Let me know if you have any questions in the comment section below. Also, I’d love to hear how you preserve white in your watercolor paintings or how you add it. It’s fun how everyone does something different! 🙂
Leave a Reply