Watercolor Painting for Dummies (15 page)
Read Watercolor Painting for Dummies Online
Authors: Colette Pitcher
Tags: #Art, #Techniques, #Watercolor Painting, #General
You do most of your painting with the paint on the hairs of the brush. But the other end of the brush is a great tool too. Following are a couple of tricks for the other end:
Round ends:
A brush with a normal round handle end can make polka dots or just a quick dot. Dip the end of the handle in paint, then touch it to paper for a dot. Different size brushes make different size dots.
You can also draw with this end. It may be jagged but that looseness may be pleasant.
Chisel ends:
Some brushes have a slanted or
chisel
end. This type of end is a functional tool for scraping paint. When paint is wet, just before the shine is about to dry, use the chisel end to scrape away paint and leave a light line. You hold the brush nearly parallel to the paper and push off paint with the curved edge of the chisel end.
If you use the sharp edge instead of the curved edge, you’ll carve a line in the paper that will fill in with paint and make a dark line. If the paint is too wet, you get the same result.
If you don’t have a brush with a chisel end, try using a plastic knife or a credit card to scrape paint. This technique is perfect for quickly creating veins in a leaf or blades of grass in a field. It will look as if you spent hours painting around the lines.
Remember the story of Goldilocks and the three bears, in which the porridge was too hot, too cold, and just right? Switch the porridge with water, and the same is true for watercolor paper and brushes. It’s too wet, too dry, or just right. When you know how to deal with each condition, your watercolor painting will be much easier. That’s what I help you do in the next sections.
When you paint, you’ll start with a damp brush. Sometimes you’ll dampen the paper with water and thereby make the brush damp. Next scoop up some paint in the hairs of the brush. Apply the paint to the paper that is dry or wet, depending on the look you want. When changing the color, first rinse the previous color in water, and then pick up the next color.
A big key to success is even wetness. And sometimes to achieve that, you have to let everything dry and start fresh on the next layer. Especially if you’re painting a large area, it’s difficult to have the same wetness everywhere. You may get puddles in one area, while another is beginning to dry out. When you see parts of the painting becoming dry, the best plan is to let everything dry and start again in another layer. Say this with me: “When in doubt, dry it out.”
Watercolor has a
magic time.
It’s just as the shine is about to leave the paper, when the paper is damp with no puddles or dry spots. This is the perfect time for all the techniques described in Chapter 4 or using a chisel-ended brush to scrape paint away as described in the “Painting with the Brush’s Other End” section earlier in this chapter.
One way to let watercolor work for you is to paint
wet-in-wet.
The paint is wet and the paper is damp. The paint travels a little on damp paper. You can even paint on damp paint. I sometimes think that what scares people from using watercolor is the perceived lack of control — the paint moves! But that movement is precisely the fun of watercolor. Lose control and enjoy it.
This wet-in-wet technique can be a garden of flowers, an abstract, or a cool background. What will yours be?
1.
Use a quarter sheet of watercolor paper.
2.
Choose and prepare as many colors as you want to use.
By having your colors ready, you won’t waste valuable time mixing paint while your paper dries prematurely.
3.
Dampen the paper with clear water.
Apply the water with a brush or sponge. Wet the back of the paper, too, so that the paper lies flat and stays wet for a while. This gives you plenty of time to play with paint before the paper starts to dry.
4.
Apply your colors by dropping them randomly onto the wet paper, dripping color from a #12 round brush, or painting a line and letting it spread.
Let the colors mix. Rinse your brush between picking up new colors. If your paint doesn’t drip, lightly touch the tip to the paper to see if it will transfer the paint to the paper. More water may make the paint drip better. The drier the paper becomes, the less spreading the paint does.
Wet-in-wet technique is a great way to make backgrounds that have a softer edge and are less detailed. I painted the following painting in two stages. The first stage (see Figure 5-3a) was painted wet-in-wet using a blue-gray mixed from ultramarine blue and burnt sienna. I painted all the trees, fields, and hills while the paper was very damp. Then I let the background dry. I added the pheasants, fence, and grasses when the paper was dry so the paint would hold a hard edge (see Figure 5-3b). The hard edge and details help create the illusion of space.
Figure 3-5:
A landscape using wet-in-wet for a soft, less detailed background.
Too much water on the paper creates
puddles.
Puddles are loads of water. Having puddles and lightly damp areas together creates uneven wetness. The puddle will travel into the dry area and create a line where it can’t travel anymore. Puddles also can take forever to dry. To solve this, pick up the paper and pour the water off. Or you can blot it off with a damp brush, a paper towel, a clean sponge, toilet paper, the sleeve of your shirt — whatever’s handy.
When your brush is too wet, you introduce more water than you need into the painting. To limit the amount of water, tap the brush on the damp sponge after you rinse it. The sponge absorbs any dripping water, and you don’t go back into the painting with more water than is there already.
When you get more water than pigment, the water dries at uneven rates and creates blooms, blossoms, cauliflowers, backwashes, or happy accidents, an example of which is shown in Figure 3-6. Sometimes these look really cool and create a fun, juicy watercolor look, especially in a sky. Enjoy and have fun creating them. But trust me on this: If you want a smooth, flat wash and you get a bloom in the middle, it’s no “happy” accident. So figure out how to control blooms right now so you get them only when you want them.
Figure 3-6:
Blossoms created by uneven wetness.
You need to know how to control or create blooms (or whatever you choose to call them), and the first step toward that is knowing how they form:
1.
Get a 4-x-6-inch piece of watercolor paper.
2.
Activate your choice of pigment color.
Add water to make a puddle of color in the mixing area of the palette.
3.
Using a large flat brush, cover the entire surface of the paper with paint quickly so it’s all the same dampness.
If the paper absorbs the water and dries, reapply the paint until it’s damp everywhere.
4.
Wait until the paint shine is just about to disappear. Drip a brush of clean water on the painted surface.
Because the water is introduced into the damp paint, you get uneven wetness, and you should get a bloom, probably immediately. Resist the temptation to fiddle with it.
If you don’t see a bloom, you probably dripped the water too soon or too late. Let the whole thing dry and try Steps 3 and 4 again.
5.
Let the paint dry.
Try the exercise again with other colors to see what blooms look like in a rainbow of shades. You can also try dripping wet color into nearly dry color to see the results.
Any hair dryer is a friend to the impatient watercolorist. It speeds up your waiting time until the next layer is dry. When you use a blow-dryer, dry from the front and back of the paper. Hold the dryer about a foot away and move it around for gentle, even drying. Any temperature seems to work. I’ve even used the high temperature from a distance and for short amounts of drying time.
You can even experiment with pushing paint with air. If the paint is liquid enough, you can push it into running shapes. Remember blowing around paint with a straw in school to make an oriental art copy? Another experimental technique is to put the dryer close to the puddle of paint and force dry it so the paint makes concentric circles as it dries.
The easiest way to fix a bloom is to avoid making one. And the best way to avoid making one is to ignore those who speak ill of watching paint dry and baby-sit your painting as it dries. Until it’s dry, your painting can change and do some weird things. If you can see a bloom forming where you don’t want one, nip it in the bud by using your brush to pull the wetness and pigment around the perimeter of the area so it’s evenly wet.
Never leave a puddle unless you plan on a bloom. Blot puddles and excess liquid from the painting’s edges and especially table surfaces. You are in control of the painting. You can enjoy the surprises that blooms can deliver, or you can make even, smooth washes. You control the water so it will deliver the result that you want.
Blooms can be fun texture in the right place: trees, clouds, mountains, water, you name it. But sometimes a bloom happens where you don’t want it: on a face, in a smooth area, or some other surprise.
Depending on the pigment and paper, fixing blossoms may be easy or impossible. You can try three possible solutions:
Add another layer of color.
If the pigment is pale, another layer of paint may camouflage the blossom.
Try to lighten the blossom.
Wet the entire area with clear water. Take a stiff paintbrush and nudge the offending area. Blot with a towel to lift the paint.
Scrub the area using a stiff brush — even a toothbrush.
As a last resort, if you’re using 100 percent cotton rag paper, dampen the area with clear water.
Let it soak a little. Gently take a toothbrush that you have designated to watercolor and scrub. When little paper bits start to pile up, stop. It’s possible to rub a hole in your paper, and if you’re using cheaper paper, you can rub a hole even quicker, so keep an eye on the paper. Cotton rag paper can take a lot of abuse, though, so if that’s what you’re using, try it.
Of course, you can always start over. Remember, experience is what you get when you don’t get what you want.
