Watercolor Painting for Dummies (9 page)
Read Watercolor Painting for Dummies Online
Authors: Colette Pitcher
Tags: #Art, #Techniques, #Watercolor Painting, #General
Texture
describes the surface finish on paper. The type of paper you choose gives you different effects with the paint. You may want a smooth paper for lots of detail or a textured surface to make sparkling reflections on water. You can choose from three main surface textures:
Hot press:
This texture is even and smooth, and makes a nice surface for prints and drawings. The paper has a slicker finish that you can use to create some interesting results. It’s more difficult to make soft transitions when using this paper, so you may have more hard edges than you want. I explain more about hard and soft edges in Chapter 3.
Cold press:
This slightly bumpy texture is the most popular texture for watercolorists. The texture allows paint to settle into the texture pockets or sit on top and skip over the pockets, creating some different technique options. I go into some of these techniques in Chapters 3 and 4.
Rough:
Rough texture has an even bumpier surface than cold press. This surface is good for exaggerated rough texture techniques, which I illustrate in Chapter 3.
Paint is made up of a couple of elements.
Pigment
is either chemical or natural coloring that has been ground to a fine powder. The powder is added to a
binder
that makes it sticky and allows it to be used as paint. The binder for oil paint is oil. The binder for milk paint is milk. Now, what’s the binder for watercolor? That’s right, it’s gum arabic! Okay, it was a trick question.
Gum arabic
is a water-soluble, sticky, clear goo that when added to pigment makes watercolor. Powdered pigment can’t be used without a binder, which is already in the paint when you buy it. Most watercolorists just use plain water to dilute their paints and for cleanup, but you can purchase a little jar of gum arabic and use it to thin your paint if you want. It makes the paint shiny and makes it flow nicely.
The words
pigment
and
paint
are used interchangeably in this chapter and, indeed, throughout this book.
You can purchase pigment in two grades:
Student-grade
paint has less pigment and more filler and is easily identified by its lower cost. You can still produce a nice painting using it, so I recommend starting with this grade if you’re on a budget.
One disadvantage of cheaper paint is its lack of
lightfastness,
meaning the color can fade.
Professional-grade
paint costs about twice that of student-grade because it has a higher quality of pigment, finer grinding, and less filler.
Does the grade make a difference in the painting? Yes, so upgrade to professional paint when you’re ready. How can you tell the difference between student-grade and professional-grade paint? Price. A tube of student-grade paint ranges in price from $1 to $5 per tube. Professional-grade paint ranges from $9 to $30 per tube.
Higher grades of paint are usually more permanent or lightfast.
Permanent,
as applied to pigment, means that the color won’t fade in light.
Fugitive
means that light will cause the color to fade (sometimes completely). Some pigments rate very high in lightfastness. For example, earth colors in the brown family, like yellow ochre and burnt sienna, get the highest rating for lightfastness, even in a student-grade pigment. Bright colors, reds, and purples tend to be more fugitive.
Check for a star rating on your paint labels. More stars (the highest is four stars) means the pigment is more permanent.
Watercolor paints come in two types of packaging:
Tubes:
Tubes prevent the moist watercolor paint from drying out while it’s stored. The paint is soft and easy on brushes. Some artists prefer the rich soft color straight out of the tube. Tubes come in 5-milliliter and 14-milliliter sizes. Some brands even make a larger tube.
If you have a tube that dries out and gets hard, don’t throw it away. Cut open the tube and use it like a pan of paint. You can rehydrate it with water.
Pans:
Pans are prefilled containers of paint. Sometimes called
cakes,
these are dry or semi-moist. Children’s watercolors are usually pans. You can also buy pans of student- and professional-grade paints. Pans are sold in sets and individually. If you run out of room on your palette, glue a pan in for more colors. Pans come in whole and half sizes depending on the manufacturer.
I like the travel sets with pan paints for painting on location, but I usually use tubes with softer paint in the studio. The soft paint from tubes yields rich, intense color without having to grind the tip of your brush into the paint.
To start out, I recommend a nice set of watercolors that you can afford. Try both tubes and pans because you may prefer one.
Different pigments have some built-in characteristics. By understanding and anticipating what they do, you can get some interesting effects. You may find an effect happening when you paint and you don’t know why. You can choose pigments that either have the characteristic or don’t, depending on what you want to happen. All watercolors have at least one of these characteristics:
Sedimentary pigment:
Some pigment chemicals weigh more than others. Heavy pigment sinks into the pockets of rough paper and makes a granular texture when dry. It’s an interesting look only achieved in watercolor. Some sedimentary pigments include ultramarine blue and Payne’s gray. If you don’t want a sedimentary texture, use a smooth paper or avoid sedimentary pigments.
Staining pigment:
Some pigments leave color behind even when they’re washed off the paper (I discuss this technique in Chapter 3). A faint stain of color is a tell-tale sign of a staining pigment. Reds, violets, and phthalocyanine blue and green are very staining. Staining pigments are rich and make deep darks.
Transparent versus opaque pigment:
Watercolor is usually painted
transparent,
meaning that light actually penetrates the paint, reflects off the white paper, and bounces back into the eye. The effect is glowing, fresh, sparkling watercolor. Any pigment is transparent if you add enough water.
Opaque
pigments are ones you can’t see through. Some pigments are more opaque than others. Cadmiums are opaque; however, if you add enough water, they can be transparent. Opaque paints can cover other paint. Opaque colors tend to get muddy quickly, so use them with caution. You can control where light bounces back by using more or less opaque pigments.
