4 Steps To Using Our Paints - The Simplest Way

  • Pick Your Colors

    Either pick them randomly (like I do) or pick a few that fit your color scheme.

  • Wet Your Brush

    Find your favorite brush, whisper a few sweet nothings to it, then dip it in some clean water.

  • Touch Brush to Paint Side of DryColor Sheet

    One side of our paint has a wash to show you what the color could look like (this side also has the name stamped on it) and the other side is our concentrated paint - you want that side.

  • Start Painting!

    You are ready to start painting. The wet brush both activates and lifts the concentrated paint from the back of our DryColor sheet.

Here is a short video demonstrating the technique from above!

In this video our resident artist Catie North is using our Travel Palette to demonstrate just how easy it is to paint with our watercolors.

In The Travel Palette all of the Drycolor sheets are attatched with their paint side facing outwards, ready to use. You can see that all she has to do is touch a wet brush to the paint and the paint activates and she's all ready to paint.

Here are a few other ways to use our paint

One way a lot of our community members use our paint is to clip off little pieces of our Drycolor sheets and then add them to water filled mixing wells. Start with a small piece (there is a lot of paint on our Drycolor sheets and then add bigger pieces if you want a darker color.

Some artists prefer this technique because you can get a softer more controlled shade of paint this way. You can also add a little bit of water to a mixing well and then use your wet brush to transfer paint from the Drycolor sheet to your palette.

Little by little you can add more color by wetting your brush, touching it to the paint side of the Drycolor sheet, and then adding it to the water in your mixing palette.

This is a very easy way to get into mixing Peerless Watercolors to get the color you are going for. You can keep adding different amounts and combinations of paints to your well to experiment and make the perfect shade of color for your painting!

Our Liquid Watercolors

We also sell our colors as ultra-concentrated liquid watercolors as well. This form of watercolor opens up many new and exciting ways to use our paints - some artists find they can administer and mix paints a little more precisely when using our liquid watercolors.

Plus the awesome bottle/pipette combo feels like it's straight out of a laboratory - there's a reason why we call it the Peerless Color Labs!

Buffy Kaufman has been pioneering putting our liquid watercolors into mini spray bottles and using them as a sort of manual Instagram filter for her paintings. The light mist of color adds certain hues to the painting that you can't get by any other means!

She also has added them to sea salt, stirred them until they were combined, let the salt re-solidfy, and now can add what she calls her "magic salt" to a painting whenever she needs a pop or explosion of color!

Our Peerless Paints Community

Our company and our paints have alway been about getting creative. Peerless Watercolors was founded by a chemist who was curious about how to more easily colorize black and white photographs. Just playing around he stumbled on something that he had to show to the public!

What I'm trying to say is that I highly encourage you take my suggestions above as just that - suggestions. They are the easiest place to start from when you want to learn how to use our watercolors but that doesn't mean that you can't improve on them and create your own techniques.

As you know, art is about self exspression, enjoying the creative process, and having fun more than it's about the actual painting you end up with at the end. It's a safe place where you can slow down, have fun, and play around.

So of course, learn to use our paints as I've described above but then start playing around with them and using them in ways that no one, not even you would or could have expected.

Don't take yourself too seriously and know that you have the universes full permission to fill that page with a colorful, beautiful, chaotic mess of paint if you'd like and no one will ever jugde or think less of you for it.

- Dalton, Co-owner Nicholson's Peerless Transparent Watercolors