What Is Granulating Watercolor?

Granulating watercolor is basically watercolor that refuses to behave completely evenly.

And I mean that as a compliment.

Some pigments settle into the tiny valleys of the paper as they dry. So instead of ending up with one flat, smooth wash, you get texture. Little deposits of pigment. Areas that are darker, lighter, more broken up. Sometimes soft, sometimes dramatic, sometimes almost like stone or dust.

That is granulation.

I love it because the paint gets to do something too.

You still choose the pigment, the amount of water, the paper, the brush, all of that. But you are not controlling every millimetre. The pigment moves, settles, separates and leaves behind something you could not have drawn on purpose in quite the same way.

Which is probably why I keep coming back to it.

Why does it happen?

Watercolor is made from pigment and binder, usually gum arabic, plus whatever else the maker chooses to put into the recipe.

The important part here is the pigment.

Pigments are not tiny identical little dots. Different pigments have different particle sizes, weights and structures. Some stay more evenly suspended in water. Others sink and gather.

When those heavier or larger particles settle into the texture of the paper, you see granulation.

So two paints can both be blue and still behave completely differently.

One gives you a very smooth wash.

The other starts doing all kinds of tiny weird things while it dries.

And this is why I am much more interested in pigments than colour names.

A colour name can be lovely, obviously. I name my own paints too, so I am hardly going to pretend otherwise. But if you really want to understand a watercolor, look at what pigment is inside it and how that pigment behaves.

The paper matters more than people think

Put the same granulating watercolor on hot pressed paper and rough paper and it can almost look like two different paints.

Rough and cold pressed papers have more texture, so the pigment has somewhere to settle. Hot pressed paper is smoother, which often makes the effect more subtle.

Water matters too.

A wetter wash gives pigment more room to move around before it dries. Sometimes you get much more separation that way.

And then sometimes you do exactly the same thing twice and get two slightly different results, because watercolor likes to remind you that it has not signed a contract.

That part is half the fun.

Is granulating watercolor better?

No.

I do not think paint really works like that.

Smooth paints can be beautiful. Granulating paints can be beautiful. Staining pigments can be useful. Non-staining pigments can be useful.

It depends what you want.

I just happen to love paint with a bit of behaviour in it.

Granulation is especially beautiful in skies, rocks, landscapes, old walls, bark, shadows, ceramics and anything where a perfectly flat colour would feel a bit dead.

But I also use granulating paints simply because I like watching them dry.

That is a perfectly valid reason too.

Why handmade granulating watercolor can feel different

When you make watercolor by hand, you get very close to the pigment itself.

I work with dry pigments, gum arabic and my own binder recipe, and I pour the pans in several layers before leaving them to cure.

I do not use fillers to bulk the paint out.

That means I am interested in letting the pigment behave like the pigment.

Some pigments are smooth. Some are difficult. Some granulate beautifully. Some separate. Some need more patience than others.

And sometimes the same colour will show slightly different character from one pan to another because handmade paint is, well, handmade.

I actually like that.

I do not want watercolor to behave like plastic.

If you want more granulation

Try a rougher watercolor paper.

Use a little more water.

Leave the wash alone while it dries instead of brushing back into it every twelve seconds. I know. Difficult.

And start with pigments that naturally granulate.

You can also mix granulating and non-granulating colours and get some really beautiful separation.

There are endless ways to play with it.

That is probably the whole point.

Granulating watercolor gives you colour, but it also gives you texture and movement.

And every now and then it does something on the paper that is much better than the thing you had planned.