Painting a convincing watercolour sky is one of those things that looks effortless when done well and hopelessly frustrating when it goes wrong. The secret — and it is not really a secret at all once someone explains it — is the wet-on-wet technique: applying wet paint to pre-wetted paper so that colours spread, blend, and feather naturally into each other without hard edges. It is the technique that gives watercolour skies their characteristic soft luminosity, and it is what separates a flat, overworked sky from one that looks alive. In this step-by-step guide we walk through the complete process for a simple blue sky with clouds, covering paper preparation, colour mixing, reading the sheen, adding cloud shadows, and the most important skill of all — knowing when to stop. We also cover how to adapt the approach for different conditions from stormy skies to sunsets, what to do when things go wrong, and which supplies we recommend from our range at Craft and Canvas. Read on, then find everything you need in store or at craftandcanvas.co.uk.

Most acrylic painters work with the same handful of mainstream brands — reliable, widely available, and perfectly good. Wallace Seymour is something different. Founded in 2011 by Rebecca Wallace and Pip Seymour — two practising artists with decades of experience in the art materials industry — this small British company makes acrylic paint in small batches with an almost obsessive commitment to pigment quality. Many of their pigments are sourced from original quarries and processed in-house. The colour range includes over 100 shades in 60ml tubes, among them historic earth colours and natural pigments you simply cannot buy from any mass-market brand. The paint itself has a soft gel consistency, a noticeably higher pigment load than most commercial acrylics, and dries slightly more slowly — giving more working time and a rich satin-gloss finish that rewards careful technique. In this post we give our honest, independent assessment of the range — what makes it special, how it compares to the brands you already know, and which colours are worth starting with. We also cover the full Wallace Seymour mediums range that we stock alongside the paints. Read on, then find the full selection in store or at craftandcanvas.co.uk.

Walk into any art shop and ask for watercolour paper, and you will be asked almost immediately: cold press or hot press? If nobody has explained the difference, it is an unexpectedly tricky question. The terms refer to the manufacturing process — specifically whether the paper is pressed through cold felt-covered rollers (which leaves a textured surface) or hot metal rollers (which smooths it almost flat) — but what matters to a painter is how each surface behaves. Cold press absorbs water readily, softens brushwork, and creates the natural granulation most people associate with watercolour. Hot press is smooth, vivid, and precise — better for detail and illustration, but less forgiving of imperfect technique. In this guide we explain both surfaces in detail, plus rough press, the overlooked third option for expressive textured work. We also cover cotton vs wood pulp, paper weights, whether you need to stretch paper, and how the papers we stock at Craft and Canvas — Fabriano Classico 5, Saunders Waterford, and Bockingford — compare to each other. Read on, then find the full range in store or at craftandcanvas.co.uk.