A Watercolor Checklist That Actually Helps
You pick up your brush, mix a color, and five minutes later you're staring at a puddle that doesn't look like anything you intended. This happens to everyone. The Quick Watercolor Checklist is basically a pre-flight routine — nothing mystical about it. It's a short list of things you check before you put paint on paper, and it cuts down on the obvious mistakes so you can focus on the hard part, which is making something that looks good. The checklist breaks down into four sections: materials, paper prep, palette setup, and process. Each section has maybe three to five items. That's it. The idea isn't to overwhelm you with steps, it's to catch the stuff that routinely ruins paintings before you even start. Materials: Are your brushes in decent shape? Do you have enough water containers, and are they clean? Is your paper taped down or stretched?
Paper prep: What weight is the paper? Are you working on cold-pressed or hot-pressed? Is the surface dry or do you need to pre-wet it? Palette setup: Which pigments are on your palette? Have you tested them? Are they the ones you actually know how to mix with, or are you guessing? Process: Do you have a plan for light to dark? Are your washes thin enough to layer? Is there a value sketch or reference ready?
How I Use It in Practice
I keep it on a small index card at my studio desk. Ten seconds to run through it. Most of the items are physical checks — touch the paper, look at the brush, glance at the palette. I don't read each one out loud. It's muscle memory at this point. Here's a specific problem I ran into that the checklist helped me avoid. I was painting a coastal scene once and skipped checking the paper weight because I grabbed a pad I'd used before. The paper was 140lb cold-pressed, not the 300lb I usually reach for. First wash went on fine. Second wash I loaded up a bit heavily for a sky gradient, and by the third layer the paper was buckling and the pigment was pooling in weird ridges. I had to let it dry completely, sand the bumps down, and repaint half the sky. Took three extra hours and the result was still worse than it would've been on heavier paper. After that, the first item on my checklist became: confirm paper weight before unpacking anything else. It saves more time than any technique I've ever learned.
Get the Full Details
Counter-Intuitive Things Beginners Miss
One thing that trips people up constantly is the assumption that more water equals smoother washes. That's not true. Too much water on the paper means longer drying time, which means more dust settling into your wet paint, more pooling, and unpredictable edge formation. A slightly concentrated mix applied with confidence often lays down cleaner than a watery one that sits around. Another thing: people treat the checklist as a one-time thing. It should be checked again between major steps, not just at the start. After your first wash dries, flip back through the process section. Is your palette still organized? Did you need to restock any colors? Are your brushes still clean enough for the next layer? Five seconds, maybe thirty seconds at most, but it prevents a lot of mid-painting panic.
Common Pitfalls with the Checklist Itself
The biggest downside is that it can become a crutch if you memorize it too rigidly. Some situations demand you skip steps. If you're painting en plein air and the light is shifting fast, you don't have time to run through every item. In those cases, I just check the critical three: paper condition, brush state, and whether my palette is workable. Everything else gets deferred. Another issue is over-reliance on the materials section. The checklist won't fix bad technique. You can check every box and still produce a muddy painting if your color mixing is off or your value structure is weak. The checklist manages the controllable variables, not your skill level. It's a floor, not a ceiling. For people who find the four-section structure too rigid, an alternative is a single-column version that just lists the top ten most common failure points in order of frequency. Some painters prefer that because it's faster to scan. I've seen both approaches work. The four-section version just gives better coverage for longer sessions.
How to Build Your Own
Print out the current version I use below, or write your own from scratch. Start with the four sections and add or remove items based on what mistakes you actually make. Most people have two or three recurring problems — paper warping, muddy mixes, rushed drying. Those belong at the top of your list. I don't recommend copying someone else's checklist wholesale without testing it on a few paintings first. What works for a landscape painter might miss the concerns of a portrait painter entirely. The checklist is only useful if it reflects the errors you're actually prone to making. Download the Quick Watercolor Checklist (PDF)
The file is about two pages. First page is the standard four-section format. Second page has a blank template if you want to customize it. There's also a one-page condensed version at the bottom for plein air use. I update the file occasionally when new common issues come up from reader feedback, so the link stays current.
Final Notes
Run through the Quick Watercolor Checklist before every session, not just when something goes wrong. That's how it becomes useful instead of feeling like a chore. Thirty seconds now versus an hour of fixing mistakes later is a reasonable trade-off. The checklist doesn't make you a better painter, but it stops you from making the same preventable errors twice.
