How to get started in Watercolor

Painting can be quite an enriching activity and you actually never stop learning from it; it goes from learning new techniques to finding new ways to express an idea or a concept. Things get tricky when you try to join both parts and you do not know how to solve one of them, sometimes you might know what to paint, but you are not completely sure of how to start painting; or viceversa, you already have painting skills, but you find trouble trying to translate what you are thinking into the surface.

Something that most novice painters have problems with is they are not familiar with the materials, therefore, they end up with something they are not completely satisfied with -a wrinkled or a torn paper, a mass of color with no volume or form, or having outlined your work with a pencil that is too dark and not being able to erase it, to name a few-. These faults are easy to correct with a proper use of materials, or tricks you learn from experience.

In order to start with your watercolor, you need to have the right equipment. You do not have to spend a lot of money, but it is important that you buy the right materials to have a successful result. In the following bullet points, we will enlist a series of tips you should take into consideration to start your own masterpieces.

Choose the right paper: If you end up with a wrinkled or torn paper, it is probably that you are using the wrong paper. This is one of the most common mistakes made by beginners. Try not to go for a normal piece of paper because these are not resistant to water and you will end up with ponds. To fix this problem, you need to buy watercolor paper. This paper is made of cotton, so it will resist water without forming ponds and wrinkles. Cotton paper (or watercolor paper as it is commonly referred) comes in different weights, usually the lighter the cheaper, also prices vary depending on the brand. To get started, I would recommend to buy 150 gm block of watercolor paper, so you have enough sheets to work with.

Not leaving enough time to dry: If you end up with a shapeless figure that is a mixture of various colors, no volumes, shadows or highlights, you may be working to fast. It is well known that the nature of watercolor is to be really watery, but sometimes you need to let it dry before continuing.

Note: Backruns are the result of the collision of two water colored surfaces, they are commonly use for a wet on wet technique. They proportionate a wonderful effect, unique of watercolor, but if you want to keep your areas out of them, just wait for it to dry.

Shadowing with black: Another common mistake beginners make is trying to add shadows with black watercolor. People, animals, or objects in real life not always have black shadows, if you look at them you can see that the color gets darker but not to the point of being black.

An easy way to darken a color is by adding their complementary color. It will make the color less bright and intense, giving it a more neutral or less pure color. So for an orange, you need to add blue; for the green you add red; and for the violet, yellow.

Outlining too hard: Having a watercolor where the pencil lines show is a matter of taste. Some people like them and some don't.

The thing we need to pay attention here is our pencil. We need to make sure it is not something that will draw too dark (4B or higher) or something that is too light (6H or higher). If we draw too dark, later it will be difficult to erase it fully; If we use a pencil that is too light, we will draw harder and it can damage the paper at the moment we want to erase it. The pencil that is recommended for sketching is a 2B or an HB (personally, I prefer to sketch with a 4H, since it is not that dark as the ones on the B denomination, and is not that light to damage the paper).

Other thing you need to take into consideration is that after you have painted over your sketch, it will be harder to erase the lines of the pencil. The picture to the right is an example of how the sketch lines show in the final painting. It doesn't look bad, in my opinion, because they are soft and done with proper pencil.

Using the proper brush: Just as having a suitable pencil for your sketches, you need a a pack of brushes that help you paint without any problems. We can divide the brushes in three categories: by their size, shape, and the material they are made of:

1. Size: Brushes come in different sizes, from small ones (1-5), two more big ones (16-20). Try to use smaller one for details, and the big ones to cover large areas. Figure 4.

2. Shape: each brush is use for different purposes, a round one will not give you angular lines as a flat one, a fan brush is suitable to create textures as fur or grass. Figure 5.

3. Material: We can divide is in two subcategories: Natural and synthetic. For watercolor it is suggested to use natural and soft brushes (The hard ones like the ones made of hog are suitable for oils) or from nylon.

Not leaving highlights: This mistake is something many beginners do. When you paint in watercolor, you have to remember that you do not have white painting (later we will talk about color) and if you buy a watercolor set that includes it, you should not take it as a highlight color. This is because the white that is sometimes added in watercolor do not cover the other hues; the white in watercolor is the paper.

Some artist use masking fluid to protect the paper from pigment, as others use white acrylic or guache.

Color: If you want to start a pallet, but have no idea which hues you should buy, remember that you can obtain all colors (or at least many of them) by mixing the primary ones: Yellow, Red, and Blue.

- But which hue of yellow should I buy?

To answer this question, we need to look out for temperature. Color has the quality to posses a temperature (warm or cold). We generally asume that reds, oranges and yellows are warm, while greens, blues and violets tend to the cool side of the spectrum; but, although this premise is partially true, we need to know that temperature can be subjective, and we can appreciate this by juxtaposing two different colors (figure 6, 7, & 8).

So, having considered the color temperature, I would recommend you to buy a warm yellow, red, and blue, as well as a cool hue of each one, and ocre, or a siena (to have an earthy color to mix with, although you can create this ones buy mixing the three primaries in different proportions).

By having a warm and a cool shade of each primary will allow you to have different types of greens, oranges, and violets. You will not get the same violet if you mix Ultramarine blue with a Crimson Red, as if you mix Phthalo blue with Cadmium Red.

To know which shades you can buy, after reading this, I will make you a suggestion of which ones I would buy.

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#English #Watercolor #Art #HowTo