Watercolor Tutorial: How to Paint With a Sponge

Learn how to add highlights, shadow and texture to your nature illustrations with the watercolor sponge technique

Berta Llonch is a fine artist and illustrator who specializes in watercolor. Her complete understanding of this discipline allows for the unexpected. The artist makes the most of water stains that can escape her control.

She paints her work sideways and upside down, to help her focus on the basic shapes and proportions, and uses alternative techniques, like sponges, to spread the paint over the paper.

She teaches you how to use this technique in the following tutorial.

Basic materials

You will need these materials:

• Watercolor paint (half pans or tubes)
• Black and white watercolor ink
• A range of brushes
• A piece of kitchen sponge
• Fine grain watercolor paper
• An image to work from

3 Steps to Painting Watercolor With a Sponge

1. Turn the image you are working from upside down and start to paint

Start working vertically Turn the image upside down to avoid paying attention to the whole figure and concentrate on the areas of color and shapes. Use a brush to apply a little black paint to represent the darkest areas in your reference image.

2. Spread the paint with the sponge

Dampen your sponge a little, then use it to gently to evenly spread your paint. This creates an effect that suggests the edges rather than defining them.

Don’t worry if a drop runs down the paper. Losing control is part of the watercolor process.

3. Turn your work sideways

Alternate between your brush and the sponge to achieve harder or more gentle outlines. Big, stiff brushes are best for larger areas. Use your fine, tiny brushes for the details, and also your sponge to spread and blur.

Finish with a little white watercolor to ‘clean up’ any areas that lack definition and add highlights to specific parts of your painting.

Love this tutorial? Learn how to handle watercolor freely and spontaneously when you paint aquatic life in Berta Llonch’s online course: Marine Universe Illustration in Watercolor.

You may also like:

- Essential Materials for Painting in Watercolor and Gouache
- 5 Interesting Facts About Watercolor
- 5 Female Watercolor Artists Who Will Inspire Your Next Creation
- From Botanical Drawings to Narrative Illustration, a course by Elizabeth Builes Carmona
- Scientific Illustration of Animals in Watercolor, a course by Balamoc