A bleed in watercolor is when your paintbrush touches an area that is still wet on your painting, and the color from your brush bleeds into the wet area.

Bleeds can be a fun way to use the natural unpredictable characteristics of watercolor, but bleeds can be frustrating when they happen on accident. In this post, I’ll give some tips on avoiding bleeds, how to use them in your watercolor paintings, and how to fix them if one happens on accident.

Wet on wet is one of my favorite techniques in watercolor. You have less control when using wet on wet, but it lets watercolor do the cool things that watercolor does. This technique often results in some really neat effects.

In this post I’ll talk about what the wet on wet technique is, give some ideas for how to use it in paintings, and provide some tips for how to control the flow of color.

Blooms are irregular patterns and hard edges, sometimes with a cauliflower shape, that appear within a painted area in a watercolor painting. The opposite of a smooth wash, a bloom is characterized by uneven color.

In this post, I’m sharing all of my thoughts on blooms: why they occur, how you can use them, how to avoid them, how to make them on purpose, and how to get rid them.

I see a lot of new artists ask, “How do I sign my art”. I had the same question when I started painting.

The short answer is: however you want. You are the artist, and it’s your decision to make. There is no right or wrong answer, only opinions and recommendations.

For the long answer, keep reading this post. I’ll explain how I sign my paintings and I’ll list out options for how you can sign your paintings along with recommendations. What I write is specific to watercolor paintings, but most of this will translate to other mediums as well