You'll need a piece of watercolor paper stretched on a drawing board, a large flat brush, a jar of clean water, a cloth or a tissue for drying your brush and something to prop your drawing board up at a 30-degree angle to the horizontal.

1 - You will need to tilt your painting surface first. The tilt creates a fall line or directed gravitational flow across the paper. This pulls the wash solution from high to low and collects the excess liquid in a reservoir, called the wash bead, along the bottom edge of the last brushstroke. Each brushstroke cuts into the existing wash bead and creates a wetted area underneath it, allowing it to flow down the stroke to the new edge.

2 - Charge your brush with paint. Starting at the top edge of the paper, put down a broad horizontal stroke, from one side to the other as if you were drawing a line with a pencil. Don't lift your brush until you're all the way across.

3 - Add more paint to your brush, then make another horizontal stroke making sure that the tip of your brush picks up the wash bead from the previous stripe. Don't paint above the bead, you'll ruin the evenness of your wash. You should work quickly to prevent lines in your wash.

4 - Continue this way until you get to the bottom of the paper. Squeeze the excess paint from your brush between a fold of cloth, then use the brush tip to lift the excess paint from the last stroke. Important > Leave the painting surface tilted until the wash dries completely.