Flat washes are not easy. As a beginner I was encouraged to master this technique. In fact it is not used much but it is true it does teach control and it's useful for cloudless skies..

1. Mix up enough paint - this is important your wash won't work if you run short
2. Dampen the paper - I put on a wash of clear water then dab most off with kitchen paper
3. Load up a large brush with colour - depending on the size of paper you want to cover - I used a flat brush size 10 but you could use a round brush 10 or 12
4. Tilt your board or pad to about 45 degrees you want the paint to run down slightly
5. Paint the first line horizontally at the top (I do left to right as I'm right handed)
6. It's important to do 1 whole line with one stroke - don't stop and don't go back over the line
7. Load up the brush with more paint and repeat with a second line
8. You should work fairly fast ideally line 1 will not have started to dry before you add line 2 and you can overlap very slightly
9. You will probably have a small pool of paint at the bottom - quickly dry your brush and carefully soak up this extra paint with the tip - resist the temptation to dab.

flat wash	graded wash	graded wash with yellow under wash

Graded washes work the same way except for line 2 you add more clean water to your paint mixture and for line 3 even more water. It is important to use almost clean water for the last line if you want the wash to go from dark to light

For this example I have used a very pale yellow wash (I used raw sienna but you could use yellow ochre) -then I allowed it to dry completely. You can tell when it's dry as the paper is no longer shiny. I then applied the graded blue wash with ceruleum.

This is a useful technique for skies which are darker at the top and get lighter and warmer the closer they are to the horizon.