Watercolor Painting for Dummies (41 page)
Read Watercolor Painting for Dummies Online
Authors: Colette Pitcher
Tags: #Art, #Techniques, #Watercolor Painting, #General
Designers use tracing paper to speed up drawing.
Tracing paper
is paper thin enough to see through, though it has a slightly frosted surface. You can lay tracing paper over a photograph, a magazine page, or any other flat image and see enough to trace the outline of the image underneath.
Acetate
is a plastic-like sheet that’s completely clear and lets you see all the details without the frosted surface of tracing paper obscuring anything. A water-media acetate accepts watercolor so that the paint doesn’t bead up when you apply it to the surface. The acetate, however, is heavier and costs more than good, old tracing paper.
Tracing paper is cheap, so you can use it abundantly. Scribble out your drawing. Then take another piece of tracing paper and lay it on top. Trace the lines you like and refine the drawing. Instead of erasing, lay on more tracing paper and refine the drawing again.
Make sure to remove earlier drawings from underneath. You don’t want to be confused by multiple images under your fresh sheet.
When you finish refining your image, place the final tracing paper over your watercolor paper. You can see through the paper to see the watercolor paper’s edges. Move the drawing around until you like the placement, then transfer the image, using the steps in the “Transferring your drawing to your watercolor paper” section later in this chapter.
A
projector
uses light and mirrors to re-create and enlarge an image. An artist can project the picture onto a wall and focus to the size required. You can attach paper to the wall, project the image onto the paper, and transfer the image that way.
Projectors are especially handy for muralists, who can paint directly from the image thrown on the wall. The artist just redraws the lines where he sees the projected image.
There are many kinds and qualities of projectors. Some have more options and cost more and do a better job. Some are a waste of money and barely deliver results. Before buying, ask for a demonstration.
You may be familiar with a
slide projector.
They project 35mm slides onto a wall or screen. Although they are getting scarce, they make a good image projector too, but only for slides.
Digital projectors
are replacing this technology rapidly. Digital projectors work with computers and digital cameras to project images. The good news for artists is that the new projectors give you more options, but any projector can get your image where you want it to go.
Computers are amazing tools. Some artists are going completely digital by using photo manipulation programs and technologies. Many fine art shows are wary of this and don’t allow digitally enhanced images. Still, computers can be a great tool to aid in preparing your reference materials. When you work from your own photographs, you can import them to the computer and use software to crop the image and manipulate the contrast, values, and colors. You even can reduce the photo to the image’s outlines and edges, getting you very close to having your drawing done by a computer. Of course, reducing and enlarging your images are easy too. Magic.
Starting a drawing is easier if you have a plan. A good way to make a plan is by creating
thumbnail sketches.
These mini-sketches allow you to quickly plan what you may want to make big.
Then you enlarge the drawing you like onto drawing paper or tracing paper, where you can erase and scribble and further refine it. And finally, you transfer the drawing you’re happy with onto your good watercolor paper.
Thumbnail sketches
are miniature plans that help you decide where shapes and values go for the best composition. Chapter 7 is devoted entirely to composition, and thumbnails are discussed at length there.
Make a plan sketch to determine where you need to save whites, how to arrange the value pattern to guide the viewer’s eye, where to place the center of interest, and how to break up space. Any type of paper will work: copy paper, a nice sketchbook, or the back of a discarded envelope.
You save so much paper by making small sketches first to see which are the best ideas to enlarge.
After planning the placement of the elements in the thumbnail study, redraw it to the correct size on a piece of drawing or tracing paper. Work like a designer if you need to. A designer would take scissors and cut out shapes and move them around until she had the correct placement. You can experiment with spreading objects out or overlapping them. Then you can redraw the scene using more tracing paper, or transfer the drawing to your watercolor paper if the placement is what you want. This tracing paper drawing is a tool and likely will be discarded, so spending a lot of time on it makes no sense. You want to get to the painting!
You usually
transfer
your drawing to watercolor paper instead of drawing directly on the watercolor paper. Remember that you want to respect the paper as much as possible. Erasing is not respecting. So make your drawing on a piece of drawing paper the size you want your painting to be. That way you can smudge it, set your coffee cup on it, erase it, and do all the things you’re not allowed to do on your final painting.
After you’ve drawn your image on drawing paper, or if you’re working from photographs or copying the art in this book, you need a system to transfer the original image to your watercolor paper. For that, you need a red ballpoint pen, a waterproof pen (or a pencil if a pen is too permanent for you), white artist’s tape, tracing paper (which is available at most drug stores and office supply stores
as well as art supply stores), and some
graphite paper,
which is like carbon paper (if you’re old enough to know what that is). Graphite paper is coated on one side with graphite, oddly enough, which transfers to whatever you press it onto.
You can make your own graphite paper by rubbing pencil on a sheet of paper or on the backside of the drawing. If you want a mirror image, try turning the drawing over and matching the lines or rubbing the back so the pencil transfers onto the watercolor paper.
To transfer an image, follow these steps:
1.
Tape the image to your watercolor paper using white artist’s tape on one side.
2.
Slide a piece of graphite paper under the drawing and on top of the watercolor paper, making sure the coated side of the graphite paper is on the watercolor paper.
3.
Retrace the lines using a red ballpoint pen.
The red ink lets you know where you’ve been and what’s left to transfer. The more detailed the drawing, the more helpful this tip becomes. Peek beneath the graphite paper before removing it to check for any forgotten lines. Also peek when you first start tracing to make sure the correct side of the graphite paper is down and working correctly.
The image transfers to the watercolor paper.
4.
Remove the transferred drawing and draw over the graphite lines on the watercolor paper using a waterproof pen or a pencil.
I generally use a black pen, but you can use another color if you like. Using a waterproof pen is like making your own coloring book page. Add as much or as little detail as you want, and start painting within the lines (or outside the lines if you like — you’re the artist!).
You can also use diluted paint to sketch first. When that dries, get a little bolder with the value of the paint by making it darker.
The drawing is only a guide, and you may deviate or follow it as you like.
Figures 8-15a and 8-15b show a tracing and the finished product.
Figure 8-15:
Bunny, from tracing to final painting.
Be careful not to press too hard when rubbing or using ballpoint pens to transfer your image. It’s possible to carve a line into the watercolor paper that may show up later where you don’t want it to be seen. Transferring the line requires a bit of pressure because you’re going through several layers of paper. Test on a scrap to see how much pressure you need to transfer the line but not make an indentation in the paper.
