Getting the right paint consistency

It can take a bit of practice to get your paint consistency right. Anna refers to the different consistencies as milk, cream and butter to give you an idea of the thickness of the paint.

Use your sketchbook to practice. Draw a row of 6 boxes and have a play using just one colour of paint and experimenting with adding less and more water as you complete each box so that you can see the differences in tone, going from lightest to the darkest. You can see this exercise here in the Knowledge Base video. 

It helps to have a nice flat white ceramic palette too, so that you can see the tone of the paint that you are mixing. You'll start off with a very pale watery paint and then gradually darken the tone by adding a bit more paint each time, until you get a much darker buttery consistency. In completing this this sketchbook exercise, you are learning about the tonal range of each hue.