Watercolor Tips

Watercolor 10 Fast, Simple, Easy Tips for Beginners.

The 1st  watercolor tip,  holding your brush is more important than you might think!

Imagine a surgeon having a death grip on the scalpel? mmmm… no thank you.   A nice light hand, sensitive to what is happening,  the grip on the tool sure and comfortable. At ease, from practice.

While painting and using a brush or a palette knife is really not the same as surgery,  it does involve a very similar  degree of sensitivity and light handedness.

 

 

10 Watercolor Tips

 

1. hold the brush loosely, without tight rigid stiff tension
2. stand to paint if you can, sitting hunches your neck & shoulders
3. do be ultra generous mixing your paint blends, not ‘stingy’
4. have brush fully loaded up;  flowing with ease across the paper. Not scratchy
5. do use a taped off section of your watercolor paper as a Testing Strip area
6. consider as you paint, placing cooler colors behind the warmer ones
7. ensure you haven’t over done a yellow/golden green all over in every location
8. place yellow golden greens in a Primary location ie front;  forego mid & background
9. have a hair dryer on hand
10. use Dryer to fully dry an area completely… before you make Corrections

 

 

Standing to Paint

Standing,  it Loosens you up.

It helps you to use your shoulders and to express gesture, mood and movement much easier.

Sitting and using the wrist, locks us up. Blocks the flow and hinders us from expressing gesture and movement with ease.   I need to do both, these days. I stand for awhile, then sit. And Repeat.

Differing  Styles   of art require adjusting your ‘stance.’

Wild Floral,  a double sized sheet, was painted standing while it was flat on a table.

 

Dancing Curtains,  Is a Different style of watercolor…..  and so, I needed to sit.  I needed to use my wrist for the intricacies of pattern in this small 2×3″ miniature painting.

 

Generous Paints

The brush just flows easier if it has plenty of liquid. Inadequate fluid in the brush creates streaks and uneveness.

Plus, you may not choose to have to spend all that time trying and trying, to mix up more paint to match the last batch.

And we all know, what happens when we ‘just add more water to make the paint go further.’

It makes the paint far  too pale and light!!  A Big Problem.

 

Mix up Plenty.. Be Really Generous.

And if you do have left overs, store them in tiny plastic containers with lids.  The paint will be good for about a week.

 

 

Testing the Paints First

It is so easy, so simple to tape off a couple of inches at the bottom of your paper.

Each time you mix a color, load the brush up…. and whack it on! Don’t be shy!

Is it too dark? Is it too light?  Is it too warm, too cool?   By using the Test Strip on your paper, you figure it all out…. beforehand.

Smart And Easy!

 

 

 

Warmer Paints –  Front

For This TIP,  it is important to pause here and really let the info sink in.

 

If you had a painting mainly in say, greens…. in order to get the best Depth, you need to deliberately place very cool Greens in the back.

And then progressively,  as we come into the mid area, warm the Greens abit more.   Then the foreground Greens will be the warmer.  With the Focal Point having the ……. warmest Green of all.  (generally speaking, this is a good guide for beginners.)

 

The same would apply to any and  all  other colors.

 

We must choose to change them.

To take the Main Mix,  and add a dash of blue to cool down a warm.  Or add a dash of warmth to make the cool color subtly …. warmer.

 

We Alter them to suit their individual Locations!!

They are all in different places,  so they need to be treated as such.     

 

 

You can see, that the warmer golden, yellowed greens are in front.  They’re not in the distant back or middle areas.

Warm golden, glowing yellow mixes belong in specific areas of a painting.

 

 

Just a note, for the curious as to what paints I used to mix these greens.

I created these colors in Landscapes Greens with  my Beginners Core Basics.

Cobalt blue pb28  &  Permanent Rose pv19  &  Winsor Lemon py175

 

 

 

Saving the Day – Hair Dryers

Patience is a virtue. One I’m afraid that watercolorists may find in short supply as their enthusiasm abounds.

The eagerness to get on with it is usually at fever pitch, I notice.  I’m not pointing fingers! I really am like that too. But, I have figured out how to curb it. How to work around this little quirk.

Its not difficult at all.    Most of the time, I will automatically just lay out about 3 pieces of paper.  I work on several at a time. That way when one Needs it to dry ie it is at that ‘cranky’ stage, I can easily hop on over to the next piece of paper that is laying there Waiting For Me.

If. I didn’t do this, then the next fantastic solution is to use my hair dryer to dry the painting off. That takes less than a minute.

Then, whatever Glazing that needs done, or lifting, etc.  can be done without risk of murky mud.    Because,  mud occurs so often when we are too impatient to wait for the right timing (DRY!) to apply the next layer of paint.

When we don’t wait,  those two paint applications will …. mingle and mix, to create that Mud.   yuk

 

 

Believe it or not,  INK FALLS,  called for the Hair Dryer.

I’d made a mistake and had part of it done while damp;  but I had to dry it completely, before I could return to fix it and carry on.   So I used the hair dryer to dry it.  Then redampened the entire paper with due care.

I then Corrected the mistake and proceeded along on my way.  It turned out fine.

 

 

 

 

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