Do you have any tips for doing watercolor paintings?

Plan it out to use the white of the paper for whites and paint the broader areas first in not very strong but more pastel and light colors then ad the darker accents last. If you don't trust your ability to draw with a brush you can sketch it out lightly with a pencil and work from nature a landscape or a still life. You should have one good brush in the middle size range a 4, or 5, or 6, but different brands of brushes size them differently. I should have a good point. You can also use a large flat brush for the larger areas and mix a lot of water in the beginning broadly blocking in the lager areas. There are various techniques wet into wet where you even allow the colors to bleed together and dry brushing where the paper is dry and you use the texture of the paper to give interesting broken likes or textures. Watercolor is really nice if you have good watercolor paper like D'Arches or Di Fabriano. Never overwork a watercolor keep it fresh.

Experiment! Try mixed media- sharpies, pen, charcoal, etc. over/together with watercolor! watercolor pencils are very useful in the creation of watercolors.

1) don't mix colours. this is bad when the water to paint ratio falls above 40%. try to keep an even amount of paint between the grooves of the brush hairs.

#2) NEVER mix bright & dark colours together. this creates a array of colors which WON'T match.

Start here,

http://painting.about.com/od/watercolourpainting/W...

Then try doing some of the less complex tutorials here,

http://www.watercolorpainting.com/watercolor-tutor...

http://www.johnlovett.com/getting.htm

http://www.artinstructionblog.com/watercolor-paint...

http://www.creativespotlite.com/watercolor-techniq...

http://www.artshow.com/resources/painting.html

http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=waterc...