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There are many ways to manage or achieve whites when painting in watercolor. You can simply paint around areas you'd like to reserve as the white of the paper, or you can protect select areas with some sort of mask like painter's tape or masking fluid.

But what if you didn't save the whites? Can they be recovered? 

Of course you could use white paint; but because white paint is opaque, it can sometimes look heavy and unattractive.*

Larger areas can be recovered by dampening a brush and gently lifting. I use this technique for small sections of hair, fur, or fabric, or a soft highlight in an eye. (I don't use scrubber brushes as they can damage the surface of the paper, but a magic eraser might be used carefully and sparingly to lift paint off an area.)

In the case of tiny highlights such as a cat's whiskers, the glint in an eye, or the sparkle on feathers, I sometimes use an X-ACTO knife or razor blade to carefully scrape the paint off the surface. It is important to take care not to damage the paper itself by using the side of the blade and not digging in with the tip; and once scraped, it's best to avoid painting over the area. The scraping technique is best reserved for the final touches on a painting.

Above, you can see my Broad-billed Hummingbird before I scraped the highlights with an X-ACTO knife. Compare with the finished piece at the top of this blog. I could have left the hummer as is, but I wanted him to have a bit more sparkle. I like the result. But beware: it's easy to get carried away! Sometimes less is more.

Paint. Love. Repeat.

*I have used white paint on occasion, and many watercolor artists use white paint with great success. However, it is not my method of choice.