Mixed Media Painting: What It Is and Where to Start
Watercolor as Foundation, Everything Else as Complement
Introduction
Mixed media is a term that covers an enormous range of approaches. In some contexts it means collage combined with paint. In others it means digital elements integrated with traditional media.
In illustration it might mean ink, watercolor, and gouache working together on the same surface. The term itself says nothing specific about which materials are involved or how they relate to each other.
In the context of this blog and the practice described here, mixed media has a more specific meaning: watercolor as the primary medium and other materials as functional complements.
The other materials, colored pencils, dry pastel, ink, gouache, and occasionally colored Posca pens, each solve a specific problem that watercolor alone does not solve efficiently. None of them replaces the watercolor. None of them dominates the composition. They serve the painting that the watercolor has established.
This guide covers what that approach looks like in practice, why watercolor works as the foundation, what each complement material contributes, the sequence that makes the combinations work technically, and the three practical situations where mixed media adds something that pure watercolor cannot.
1. What Mixed Media Is and How It Is Used Here
1.1 What Mixed Media Is
Mixed media, in the broadest sense used across the art world, refers to any artwork that combines two or more distinct materials or media within the same piece.
The term covers an enormous range of practice: collage incorporating paper and fabric alongside paint, assemblage combining found objects with traditional media, digital elements layered with hand-painted work, or any combination of materials, traditional or unconventional, working together on the same surface.
The defining characteristic across all of these approaches is that no single material carries the entire piece. Each material contributes something specific, and the relationships between materials, how they layer, where they overlap, what each one is visible through or beside, become part of the work's visual language.
Mixed media is not a single technique. It is a category that includes countless specific approaches, unified only by the presence of more than one material in deliberate combination.
1.2 What Mixed Media Means in This Blog
Within that broad category, this blog uses mixed media in a specific, narrower sense. The proposal here is to use other materials alongside watercolor with clear goals: to create effects, add texture, solve problems, make targeted corrections, add visual interest, and experiment with new possibilities.
The materials covered in this cluster, colored pencils, dry pastel, ink, gouache, and occasionally colored Posca pens, are the ones used regularly in this specific practice. But this list is a starting point, not a boundary. The intention is to open a door of possibilities rather than to close one.
If you have other materials on hand, oil pastels, watercolor crayons, markers, collage paper, anything that can sit alongside watercolor, there is nothing stopping you from testing how they interact with a watercolor base. What works here is what has been tested and found useful in this particular practice. What might work for you could extend well beyond it.
So the invitation is straightforward: take what is covered in this cluster as a foundation, and then go further. What materials do you already have? Try them with watercolor.
Test new combinations and see what they produce. The discoveries that come from your own experimentation will often be more valuable than anything a guide can describe in advance.
1.3 A Practice Exercise: Recreate the Effect with Watercolor Alone
Before reaching for a complement material, there is a valuable exercise worth trying: attempt to recreate the specific effect you want using watercolor alone, without any other material.
If you are tempted to reach for dry pastel to soften a transition, try first to achieve that softness with a damp brush and careful blending while the watercolor is still workable.
If you are tempted to reach for colored pencil to add a fine textural detail, try first to see how far a very fine, almost dry brush can take you in the same spot. If you are tempted to reach for gouache to recover a tone that fell short, try first whether layering, glazing, or careful lifting gets you close enough.
This exercise is not about avoiding the complement materials. It is about understanding watercolor more deeply by testing its limits before deciding where those limits genuinely require something else. Some effects are simply more efficient, or only possible, with another material, and that is exactly where the complements in this cluster belong.
But the attempt itself, working out how close pure watercolor can get to an effect that a different material would produce more easily, builds a sharper, more intuitive command of the medium.
Many painters discover that watercolor alone can do more than they assumed, and the few situations where it genuinely cannot become much clearer once that boundary has actually been tested.
2. Why Watercolor Works as the Foundation
Watercolor establishes what no other material in this practice creates as efficiently: atmosphere, luminosity, and depth through transparency. The characteristic quality of a watercolor painting, the sense that light is passing through the color and reflecting from the paper beneath, comes from the transparent layers interacting with each other and with the white of the paper. No opaque or semi-opaque material in this practice replicates that quality.
Watercolor also fills areas faster than any of the complement materials, particularly larger areas. A single wash can establish color, value, and atmosphere across a significant portion of a composition in the time it would take colored pencil or dry pastel to cover the same area through repeated strokes.
This efficiency is part of why watercolor makes sense as the starting layer rather than the finishing one. It does the broad work quickly, leaving the complement materials to focus on what they do best: precision, detail, and targeted correction in smaller areas.
This makes watercolor the logical foundation rather than a preference. The complement materials work on top of a dried watercolor surface, adding to what the watercolor has established rather than replacing it.
Dry pastel adheres to the texture of watercolor paper that has been worked with paint. Ink applied over dried watercolor sits cleanly on the surface. Colored pencil worked over dried watercolor integrates with the color beneath it. All of these relationships depend on the watercolor being the established base.
Part of the reason these materials work better on dry watercolor specifically, rather than simply on dry paper in general, is that watercolor needs water to function and the other materials in this practice generally do not.
A wash needs to flow, blend, and settle, which requires open access to the paper surface. Colored pencil, dry pastel, ink, and gouache do not have that same requirement. Most of them work most reliably on a dry, stable surface, which is exactly what dried watercolor provides.
Ink is the clearest exception to the general sequence, and it is worth noting here because it does not follow the same one-directional rule as the others. Waterproof ink can be applied either before the watercolor, as a structural guide that the paint is built around, or after the watercolor has dried, as a finishing layer that adds detail and definition.
This flexibility is unique to ink among the complement materials in this practice, and it is covered in full in the next article in this series.
The reverse relationship for the remaining materials is more problematic. Applying watercolor over colored pencil marks creates resistance because the wax or oil in the pencil repels water. Applying watercolor over dry pastel can lift and smear the pastel rather than sitting cleanly on top of it.
Applying watercolor over dried gouache is possible but produces a different surface quality than watercolor on untreated paper. The technical logic of the sequence, watercolor first, confirms what the aesthetic logic already suggests: watercolor is the foundation because it functions best as the foundation.
There is also a practical benefit to working over dried watercolor that goes beyond sequence and chemistry. A layer of watercolor applied to paper, particularly paper at 300 gsm or heavier, creates a slightly smoother film over the paper's natural texture.
The raw tooth of watercolor paper, which is what makes it absorb water-based pigment so well, can feel rough and resistant to a pencil point. Once that paper has a dried watercolor layer on it, the surface softens slightly, and colored pencil glides across it with noticeably less friction than it would on the same paper untouched by paint.
This is one of the quieter advantages of working in this sequence: the watercolor does not just provide color and atmosphere, it also prepares the surface to receive the detail work that follows more comfortably.
For more on how paper texture and weight affect colored pencil work specifically, including which surfaces feel smoothest under the pencil, this Best Paper for Colored Pencils: What Type Actually Works on Coloring Pages guide covers texture, weight, and surface type in detail.
3. The Four Complement Materials and What Each Does
3.1 Colored Pencils
Colored pencils contribute precision and texture in areas where a brush cannot produce fine enough marks. Veins on leaves, the delicate linear structure of flower petals, the texture of bark or fabric, the fine detail of a seed pod or botanical element: these are marks that require a pointed tool rather than a brush tip, and colored pencil provides that tool while integrating visually with the watercolor beneath.
Beyond detail work, colored pencil also intensifies color in specific small areas without adding moisture. When a particular section of a petal dried slightly lighter than intended, pressing a colored pencil of a similar or complementary hue over the dried watercolor deepens the tone locally without the risk of blooms or hard edges that adding another wet layer might create.
One of the most frequent applications of this technique in practice is adding texture to tree trunks and branches. A watercolor wash establishes the base color and the general light and shadow pattern of the trunk, but the fibrous, irregular quality of bark is difficult to capture with a brush alone without overworking the wet paint.
Once the watercolor layer is completely dry, colored pencil applied in short, directional strokes that follow the natural growth lines of the trunk builds up the texture of bark convincingly: the darker grooves, the lighter ridges, and the slightly irregular rhythm that makes a trunk read as wood rather than as a flat brown shape.
The pencil marks sit into the dried watercolor surface rather than on top of it, which keeps the texture integrated with the color beneath instead of looking like a separate layer of scribbles.
3.2 Dry Pastel
Dry pastel contributes atmosphere, soft tonal intensification, and the kind of diffused, velvety quality that neither watercolor nor pencil produces. Applied over completely dried watercolor with a cotton swab or a blending stump, pastel adds color or value without introducing any moisture, which means it can work in areas where the watercolor surface is too saturated to accept additional wet layers cleanly.
One of the most practical uses is tonal correction. When a shadow area, a luminous area or a deep color zone dried below the intended value and adding another wash of watercolor would create a visible tide line or disturb the surface, pastel applied and blended over the area achieves the tonal depth without any of those risks.
The painting shown here demonstrates this exact use. The moon was established in watercolor, but a flat circle of pale color on its own reads as a shape rather than a source of light.
To intensify the glow, white or pale blue-violet pastel was applied around the edge of the moon and blended outward with a soft tool, creating a halo that fades gradually into the surrounding sky.
This is tonal correction in the opposite direction from a shadow fix: instead of deepening a value that dried too light, the pastel adds luminosity to an area that needed to feel brighter than the dried watercolor alone could achieve.
Because the blending happens dry, there is no risk of reactivating the night sky washes underneath or disturbing the clean edge of the moon itself.
The pastel sits on the texture of the paper and, once applied, can be sealed with a light fixative to make it permanent.
Pastel is also the primary material for creating soft, ethereal backgrounds. A wash of very diluted watercolor followed by pastel blended into the surface produces a background that feels both painted and atmospheric in a way that either material alone does not achieve.
3.3 Ink Pen
Ink pen contributes line quality and contrast that a brush cannot replicate with the same consistency. The relationship between watercolor and ink works in two directions. Ink applied before watercolor, as a drawn structure over which color is painted, defines the composition with precision before the atmospheric work begins.
Ink applied after watercolor has dried adds definition, detail, and contrast at the finishing stage, where the brushwork has established everything except the final linear clarity.
Both approaches produce different results and suit different intentions. The specific techniques, considerations, and practical guidance for working with watercolor and ink are covered in detail in the next article in this series.
3.4 Gouache
Gouache is the only material in this practice that creates genuine opaque coverage, which means it is the only material that can place a light element over a dark one effectively.
This makes it irreplaceable in specific situations: a white flower against a dark background, light-colored details on a shadowed surface, corrections where an area has become too dark for any transparent or semi-transparent material to recover.
The critical distinction in using gouache within a watercolor-based practice is that it should be reserved for situations where opacity is genuinely necessary. When a problem can be solved with pastel or colored pencil, those are preferable because they preserve the transparent character of the watercolor surface more completely.
Gouache creates a physically different surface where it is applied, and while watercolor can be layered over dried gouache, the result does not have the same quality as watercolor on untreated paper.
Intentional use, specifically in areas where opaque coverage is the goal, produces coherent results. Indiscriminate use, spreading gouache across large areas without clear purpose, fragments the visual unity of the piece.
4. The Sequence Rule
All of the combinations described above follow the same fundamental sequence: watercolor first, dry materials after, opaque materials last.
The reason this sequence is technically necessary rather than merely advisable comes down to surface chemistry. Watercolor requires a paper surface that can absorb and hold water-based pigment.
Wax from colored pencils, oil from oil pastels, and the physical texture of dry pastel all interfere with this absorption if they are on the surface before the watercolor is applied.
A watercolor wash over a colored pencil mark will bead and resist. A wash over dry pastel may lift the pastel and muddy the color. The watercolor needs to reach the paper surface directly.
Once the watercolor is dry, the surface accepts the dry materials without interference. Colored pencil marks sit on and within the paper texture. Dry pastel adheres to the slightly roughened surface that dried watercolor creates. Ink sits cleanly on the surface.
Gouache comes last not only because it is opaque but because watercolor applied after gouache behaves differently from watercolor on untreated paper. If the intention is to layer watercolor over gouache in any area, that gouache needs to be completely dry and the application needs to be careful and deliberate.
Within the dry materials, the order is more flexible. Colored pencil and dry pastel can alternate depending on what each successive step requires. The governing question at each stage is whether the next material will sit cleanly on the current surface and whether the application will disturb what has already been established.
5. Three Practical Situations Where Mixed Media Solves Real Problems
5.1 The Reinforcement Situation
The painting is complete in terms of composition and overall color, but a specific area dried below the intended tone or saturation. Adding another wash of watercolor risks a visible tide line at the boundary between the new and existing layers, particularly if the surrounding area is fully dry.
Dry pastel applied over the dried surface and blended gently intensifies the tone without any moisture, eliminating the tide line risk entirely. For smaller, more specific areas, colored pencil achieves the same intensification with more precision. Neither material disturbs the existing watercolor layers. Neither introduces the risk that a wet layer brings.
5.2 The Detail Situation
The watercolor has established color, atmosphere, and general form, but areas that require fine linear detail, the structure of petals, the branching pattern of leaf veins, the texture of a surface, need more precision than a brush tip can consistently deliver.
Colored pencil over dried watercolor produces marks that integrate with the color beneath rather than sitting as a separate layer on top. The pressure of the pencil pushes the pigment into the texture of the paper alongside the watercolor pigment already there, creating detail that feels part of the painting rather than added to it. Ink provides the same kind of precision for marks that need to be more graphic and high-contrast.
5.3 The Correction Situation
An area has become too dark, too muddy, or has lost the luminosity it needs to read correctly in the composition. Lifting with a damp brush has limited effectiveness if the pigment has stained the paper or if multiple layers have accumulated. Adding more watercolor on top makes the area darker, not lighter.
Gouache in a matching or corrective color applied over the dried area covers the problem and creates a new surface that can be repainted with watercolor once the gouache is fully dry.
For partial corrections where the tone needs to shift rather than be fully covered, dry pastel blended over the area can warm, cool, or lighten the visual reading without covering completely. The choice between the two depends on how significant the correction needs to be.
6. Keeping Experimentation and Discipline in Balance
The invitation to experiment freely in the earlier sections of this guide and the discipline described throughout the rest of it are the foundation for building real depth and structure in your painting practice.
Finding different paths and solutions to reach a specific result expands your range and your skill, and often gets you to outcomes you once assumed were beyond your reach.
Stay open to the full range of possibilities, and focus on the solution: on finding the various paths that lead to the result you are after. Over time, holding onto that openness alongside genuine commitment to the process, you become capable of extraordinary results.
The number of materials present is never the measure of whether a choice was a good one. A painting that uses six materials is not more sophisticated than a painting that uses two, and testing a new material from your own shelf, as section 1 encourages, does not mean every test needs to survive into the finished piece.
The question worth asking after any experiment is narrower: is this material doing something specific here that nothing else, including watercolor alone, would do as well? A single precise ink line that solves a real problem belongs in the painting. A material added simply because it was available does not, regardless of how interesting it felt to try.
This is also why watercolor remains the standard the other materials are measured against, even in a practice that is genuinely open to experimentation. A composition that uses watercolor as its foundation, with colored pencil for detail and dry pastel for reinforcement, is still fundamentally a watercolor painting.
The watercolor established the atmosphere, the light, the color relationships, and the depth. Whatever else was added refined what the watercolor already built. The painting should still read as a watercolor that has been thoughtfully extended, not as a demonstration of how many different materials can occupy the same page.
So the practical test, after any experiment, is simple: did this choice preserve and extend what the watercolor established, or did it compete with it? If a material's presence would undermine the watercolor quality of the piece, that is a signal to leave it out of the final result, even if the experiment itself was worth running.
If it preserves and extends what the watercolor already built, it belongs, regardless of whether it came from the list in this guide or from something you tried on your own.
Conclusion
The practical approach to mixed media within a watercolor practice holds two things at once. There is room to experiment freely, to try a material you have never used alongside watercolor simply to see what happens, and there is a discipline for deciding what actually belongs in a finished piece.
Experimentation is how you discover what colored pencil, pastel, ink, or gouache can do next to your watercolor. The test described in the previous section, whether a material is doing something specific that nothing else would do as well, is how you decide what stays.
Over time, the decision to reach for a particular complement material becomes intuitive because the problems each one solves become recognizable before they fully develop. The sequence becomes automatic.
The relationship between the materials becomes something felt rather than calculated. That intuition is built through exactly the kind of testing this guide has encouraged throughout, not in spite of it.
The following articles in this series cover each combination in detail, beginning with watercolor and ink, then watercolor and gouache, dry pastel over watercolor, and colored pencils as finishing tools. Each article covers the specific techniques, practical considerations, and situations where the combination produces results that neither material achieves alone.
They are a starting reference, not a closed list. The materials you discover on your own, tested against watercolor with the same curiosity, are just as welcome in this practice as anything covered here.
For more on how watercolor and colored pencils work together specifically, this Using Watercolors with Colored Pencils article covers the combination in practical terms. For watercolor and pastels, this Combine Watercolors and Pastels for Stunning Effects article covers the techniques and integration approaches.
And for the foundational watercolor techniques that underpin all of this work, this Watercolor Techniques for Beginners guide covers wet-on-wet, wet-on-dry and dry brush in detail.
Happy painting.
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