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Watercolor Basics

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Re: Watercolor Basics

#71

Post by Adrig »

Paper quality is one of the most impactful factor of your setup. Don't even try to do water heavy techniques or glazing on something that is not 100% cotton. If you do, it won't look great, will be a pain to work with, and you won't understand why it doesn't work like the tutorial you're watching. I still use a non 100% cotton paper for practice, but you have to know the limitations.

For paints, look at reputable brands and start with their student grade. It's often the same quality but with fewer pigments. It means that you'll have to fight with your paint more to get darker values. Watercolor is a relatively inexpensive medium, you can graduate to better paints later. You don't need more than 12 colors at first.

To start, find a style you like and search content on youtube. There is a ton of great artists sharing their knowledge out there with a wide variety of processes.

My most important advice would be :

- Learn the color wheel and how to mix paint (rarely use paint straight off the tube, it's often too saturated)

- Value is by far the most important thing to nail. It's the bones of your painting.

- Watercolor is one of the most difficult medium to master. It can be hard to grasp the technique while learning about light, edges, composition, and other painting standards. I learned my fundamentals in digital painting, which is much more forgiving, and would recommend it to anyone (you can find cheap tablets like Huion for 50$ and it works just as well as a 150$ Wacom). For digital, I can't recommend the course from Craig Mullins on Schoolism enough. He's not only one of the greatest digital painter out there, but a great teacher too.

Re: Watercolor Basics

#72

Post by gilleain »

semi-extrinsic wrote: post #69
gilleain wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This all seems like sound(er) advice. On color : I recently realised (or read somewhere) about the simplest color wheel- if you divide a circle into 6 segments and paint the primaries : {R, Y, B} in non-neighbouring segments, then the ones in between are the secondaries: {R+Y=O, R+B=P, Y+B=G}. Then if you combine primaries and the 'opposite' secondary, you get brown/grey like colors. Also, I get quite good combinatio…

If you want to get things right, I suggest looking at Peter Donahue's Colordisk. He has several great explainers up on Tiktok (sic.), and he has several variants of his Colordisk freely available (his URL shortening, not mine): https://bit.ly/3gczeBz

Thanks, that looks very helpful. I have a 'Pocket color wheel' that works ok, but I see that link has a more sophisticated division of color space. Nice!

Re: Watercolor Basics

#73

Post by gryson »

Broken_Hippo wrote: post #68
gryson wrote: post #47

As others here are pointing out, there are a lot of points here that won't hold up for more experienced artists. For example, on brushes: "a medium round (the pointy but wide-ish one) is all you need" This depends entirely on technique and what you want to do. Trying to do consistent, smooth lines using a round brush? Good luck.

"Trying to do consistent, smooth lines using a round brush? Good luck." It just takes practice. As long as it is the proper size for the line you are making and it holds a decent point, though, it isn't so much of an issue. Rigger brushes are long-bristled, thin, and round and used for lines, after all.

A rigger brush is specialized for lines - a "medium round (the pointy but wide-ish one)" is not, and will most definitely frustrate a beginner who is trying to do good consistent line work.

The first rule for choosing a brush should be to choose the correct one for the job. Sure, an experienced artist will have better brush control, but this guide is for beginners.

Re: Watercolor Basics

#74

Post by stewbrew »

tux1968 wrote: post #27
kawera wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't ruin your acid-free paper by using tap water, use bottled water for everything, including cleaning your brushes (valid for every water-based technic like acrylic, tempera, guache...).

Isn't most bottled water essentially the same as tap water? What is the problem with tap water that needs to be avoided?

This really depends on where you live. Consider yourself lucky if it is the same.

Re: Watercolor Basics

#75

Post by KineticLensman »

themodelplumber wrote: post #14
aendruk wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reminds me of a similar experience when first shooting street photos with a deceptively compact zoom lens. After capturing a close-up of a sign someone well out of frame berated me for allegedly taking photos of him. I suspect if I’d used a larger lens he wouldn’t have been confused.

Ah, that must have sucked. Photography can be _really_ bad for that kind of thing. Especially IMO since a lot of people think regular cameras are obsolete unless you are on Official Business. Just use your phone, etc. You reminded me of one time when I was out walking with the idea of capturing some aircraft, so I had a superzoom with me. While walking into the hills I saw a house that was for sale, and I happened to…

In some Southern European countries (Greece or Turkey IIRC), photographers with long lenses will be arrested if they are caught near an airport that hosts any sort of military aircraft.

Re: Watercolor Basics

#76

Post by kawera »

CharlesW wrote: post #28
kawera wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't ruin your acid-free paper by using tap water, use bottled water for everything, including cleaning your brushes (valid for every water-based technic like acrylic, tempera, guache...).

By "bottled water" do you happen to mean "distilled water"?

No, just mineral water.

Re: Watercolor Basics

#78

Post by gilleain »

geokon wrote: post #39
bradford wrote: post #17

On practical how to: 1. Keep two water reservoirs for cleaning your brushes. One for warm colors and one for cool. (This prevents muddiness in your palette). 2. Knowing when to let the layers on your paper dry before further progress is vital. 3. Carry pigment from the bricks to your palette, don't mix pigments in the bricks. On technique: 1. Experiment adding water to a pigment on your palette (More water == thinner…

Do you have any advice on how to deal with paper warping? The paper getting sobby and uneven often quickly brings a painting session to an end :) And yet in tutorial videos I often see people paint a whole background section in one go (even as much as half the page) without any issues. Do they glue the sheet down to a board?

I use flat magnets in pairs - like neodymium ones, but disc shaped.

Like these (although I don't know the exact brand of mine):

https://www.eclipsemagnetics.com/products/magnetic-tools-and...

Re: Watercolor Basics

#79

Post by geokon »

gilleain wrote: post #78
geokon wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you have any advice on how to deal with paper warping? The paper getting sobby and uneven often quickly brings a painting session to an end :) And yet in tutorial videos I often see people paint a whole background section in one go (even as much as half the page) without any issues. Do they glue the sheet down to a board?

I use flat magnets in pairs - like neodymium ones, but disc shaped. Like these (although I don't know the exact brand of mine): https://www.eclipsemagnetics.com/products/magnetic-tools-and...

Oh very clever! Less of a mess than tape. Thanks for the idea :)
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