The Watercolourist is an independent editorial publication about painting with water. It covers materials, technique, artists, and exhibitions for anyone who takes the practice seriously, whatever their level.
There is no shortage of watercolour content online. Most of it is either surface-level enthusiasm or thinly disguised retail. This site tries to be neither. When we recommend a paper or a paint, the recommendation is based on testing and honest judgment, not on what earns the best affiliate return. When we write about an artist, we write about the work, not about how inspiring their journey has been.
The reader we have in mind is an adult who wants to get better. They may be buying their first decent brush, or they may have been painting for thirty years. What they share is a seriousness of intent, and this site tries to match it.
Articles cover a range of topics: paper weights, pigment chemistry, the difference between student and professional ranges and whether that difference matters for your purposes, artists worth spending time with, and exhibitions worth travelling to see. The site is UK-oriented but the materials and the ideas are not.
Affiliate links appear in some articles. They are there for convenience, not to shape what we write. An article should be worth reading whether or not you click anything.
The Watercolourist is independent. Commercial relationships, where they exist, do not shape what we write or what we recommend.