How to Create Beautiful Watercolor Transitions | Polar Bear & Cubs Tutorial

✨ Learn how to create smooth, glowing watercolor transitions as I paint a mother polar bear and her two cubs! In this step-by-step tutorial, you’ll discover how to stretch your paper, plan your washes, and blend brilliant pigments for crystal-clear color. 🐾🎨

Follow along step by step as I paint a serene scene of a mother polar bear with her two cubs, while demonstrating how to achieve smooth and luminous watercolor transitions.

In this tutorial, I’ll share tips for:

• Planning your painting and transferring your design using graphite tracing paper (not commercial carbon paper, which is too dark).

• Properly stretching 100% cotton, cold-pressed watercolor paper for a taut, buckle-free surface that handles large washes beautifully.

• Pre-wetting the paper and layering washes from light to dark for clean, crystal-clear color.

• Blending pigments directly on wet paper to create natural, seamless transitions.

• Keeping your palette fresh by rinsing brushes and changing water often (no muddy colors here!).

We’ll use brilliant Winsor & Newton pigments—both transparent and opaque—to bring glowing life into the arctic scene. These same color transitions will later enhance the reflected light and shadows on the polar bear family.

🎨 Artist: Pamela Hallock
🌐 Website: https://georgianbaywatercolors.com
🖌️ Supplies: Winsor Newton Watercolors (High-Intensity Transparencies: New Gamboge, Winsor Red, Alizarin Crimson, Winsor Blue, Winsor Green, French Ultramarine; Low-Intensity Transparencies: Brown Madder, Indigo, Payne’s Gray, Sap Green; Low-Intensity Opaques: Yellow Ochre, Raw Sienna, Raw Umber, Burnt Sienna, Burnt Umber; High-Intensity Opaques: Cadmium Yellow, Cadmium Orange, Cadmium Red, Vermillion, Cerulean Blue, Cobalt Blue)