Watercolor 101 - How to keep white areas white while using watercolor

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All around me is white, the once shimmering lake now looks like a snowed in field. The sky once blue now white. Even the birch trees show off their stark white bark. All day I stare at white, except for that magical moment just after five, when the sun bids goodnight and the sky explodes with colour!

The moment goes fast and I'm usually occupied feeding hungry mouths but the colours seem to burn into my retina. This week I played around with those colours - letting my ladies dive into winter sunsets.

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If you are new to watercolor like I am, you will soon realize that is all about the WHITE. Unlike oil paints where one can fix mistakes over and over, watercolor is way more picky, but oh so clean and refreshing. I started looking at my paintings and realized the ones with more white are so much prettier, so I searched for ways to keep the white intact while painting. Here is what I found

#1 White border - forget gum tape , can't figure it out for the life of me - but masking tape works amazing - leaving a fresh white border

#2 Geometrical shapes - yet again masking tape in random shapes and patterns gives your painting a modern look

#3 Gouache - this is like paint, you can paint any shape and let it dry. Then cover your paintings with watercolours. Once that is dry simply rub off the gouache to reveal crisp white!

Discovering white can be so much fun. Perhaps you know of more techniques - feel free to leave it in the comments or link to your sight. This way we can all learn together.