Watercolor books part 2 (or is it 3?)

Reading through about 20 watercolor techniques books has given me a pretty good idea of the basics I need to practice and learn. Now I'm learning that not everyone takes the same approach once they get past the basic techniques—washes, wet-in-wet, wet on dry.

For instance, I only saw the concept of doing an underwash in a few of the books. That’s the best way to color reserved areas of a scene, so when you paint over them, the color shows through. For example, a leaf with light green veins. Instead of masking the veins, then painting the light green, it’s easier to do the light green in a wash, then mask it, then paint the dark areas. And the concept of glazing: very thin washes of color repeated many, many times until the color is built up to the painter's satisfaction.

Then there are the endless discussions of what colors to buy. There's a lot of agreement on certain colors, and much disagreement on what colors should always be blended, never used straight from the tube. Greens, for instance. I've seen fascinating chapters on blending greens from the most unlikely colors, pages of tables that show the slight variations possible. This is one topic I'm itching to explore for myself.

The different approaches to painting skies are fascinating. In one of the last books I read, the painter always uses a sepia wash on the sky before he lays in the blues, and his skies are beautiful. Others reserve areas for white clouds dry and wet around them, to reserve the white. Some paint the entire sky in a blue wash, and use paper towels to blot out the white clouds. I’m anxious to try out all the techniques, and decide what works best for me.

Once I get comfortable with how to paint, I can think more about what to paint. Many of the books have practice material, from brush strokes to using sponges and other tools to get different looks. Quite a few have sketches or templates you can use, and instructions on using different techniques to paint them.

I’m trying to be systematic about this... everyone says that watercolor is the most difficult to master, so until I learn the basics I will ignore the little voice in my head that wants me to jump into the deep end of the pool, and start painting.