Watercolour is a versatile and flexible medium that can yield a variety of results. Also known as aquarelle, it’s a painting technique in which the paints are made of pigments suspended in a water-soluble vehicle.

Dating back thousands of years, watercolour is a tricky medium to master, but there’s various watercolour techniques you can adopt to help, and it’s certainly a skill worth pursuing. When you create a painting in watercolours, light reflects off the white of the paper and bounces up through the colours, giving it a luminosity that can be truly magical.

Artist Brynn Metheny helps you get to grips with the medium with some must-know watercolour techniques.

20 watercolor techniques every artist should know