#watercolour tips

[iskotaa]

A ton of delightful little tips in Hayao Miyazaki’s watercolour foldout.

Thanks to Animation Obsessive for sharing the English translation they found.

[gardenstyx]

Watercolour brainrot

my brain needs to chill about watercolours,

this is not a brag at all but I have like 6 different brands of watercolour(mainly use 2 tbh)

Like I try to get every artist I know to try and use watercolours!

Because I've had the luck and luxury to try and test products over maybe 5-6 years that I've used watercolours, I know what's good for beginners and what a good start off (if they have pretty much nothing).

Legit ask me about watercolours-I will TALK AT YOU for ages

[pityroadart]

What are the most important colours in a watercolour case? (Feel free to infodump beyond this question, please)

Hello, that all depends on your subject matter and how you like to paint! Are you going to be painting portraits so need some easy ways to mix a wide range of skin tones? Are you a landscape painter who enjoys having a few convenience greens and browns on their palette? Do you like your paints to granulate, or be easily liftable, or be excellent at glazing/staining? And when will you be using the palette - is it a small travel-sized one where you've got to be quite economical with the paints you choose, or is it a larger palette for use at the studio or at home? Is lightfastness a concern for you?

When I'm building a palette though, I base it around a split-primary palette — so a warm and cool version of each colour. This plus at least one earth colour (burnt sienna or burnt umber) and one convenience neutral (paynes gray or neutral tint) are probably the most important things to have in your watercolour collection in my opinion, especially if you're wanting to focus on colour mixing!

So my basic 8-colour palette would be something like:

cool (greenish) yellow: maybe hansa yellow light, or if like me you're not a big fan of regular yellows, a PY129 (often called green gold or rich green gold) is almost green in masstone but diluted to a lovely and functional cool yellow

warm (orangey) yellow: my favourite would be a quinacridone gold hue - either Schmincke (PR101 + PY150) or Daniel Smith or Roman Szmal (both PY150 + PO48) since they're a slightly earthier but vibrant orangey-yellow, but any warm yellow will do! Other common alternatives are new gamboge, hansa yellow medium, etc

warm (orangey) red: my absolute favourite currently is a PR255 (Daniel Smith pyrrol scarlet or Schmincke vermillion), but other common alternatives include cadmium red light (or cad red light hue), or any slightly orange-leaning red you can get your hands on

cool (purpley) red: a common choice here is a quinacridone rose PR122 or PV19, particularly if you'd be doing botanical painting, but my favourite is a PR254 pyrrol red - a postbox or fire engine red, so not particularly cool, but I really enjoy it with the quin gold in skintone mixes. Another option could be to have a middle red such as this AND a cool pinky-red on your palette.

warm (purpley) blue: the obvious choice for this one is an ultramarine PB29, a colour I think pretty much every watercolourist owns. This is a granulating pigment, but some brands such as Schmincke also offer a less-granulating version (Schmincke ultramarine finest) if you're wanting a smoother colour, or a French ultramarine for heavy granulation. I have both on my palette for different purposes.

cool (greenish) blue: the most common choice is a phthalo blue green shade PB15:3, but I much prefer the slightly cooler phthalo turquoise PB16 (Schmincke helio turquoise) - partly because I enjoy the colour and partly because it neutralises with my warm red PR255 beautifully. If you've gone for a cadmium red light as your warm red, try a cerulean as your cool blue to neutralise and match the cadmium's softness.

brown earth colour: I use this to neutralise with ultramarine and make a beautiful soft black, so my choice would be burnt umber, but burnt sienna works just as well (and is possibly more versatile)! Try and get either of these as a PBr7 pigment if you haven't already, as they tend to have the richest colours and cleanest mixes. Other options could be a quinacridone burnt orange PO48 (which I also have on my palette) , or an Indian/Venetian/English Red PR101, but see which neutralises best with your warm blue. A brown earth is also very useful for mixing darker skin tones, so bear that in mind when choosing.

neutral colour: this is a convenience (multiple-pigment, ready mixed) dark neutral colour that can be used to darken other mixes and in place of black. It's also great for monochromatic studies! Sure you can mix your own with ultramarine and burnt sienna/umber, but I get through a Lot of it so it makes sense for me to have a ready mixed version. Common options are paynes grey (a blue-leaning dark grey), or neutral tint (more neutral of course), but on my main palette I just mixed ultramarine finest and burnt umber together in one well to get my own custom mix. A thing to decide here is if you'd like your neutral dark colour to granulate or not!

These are my personal palette essentials, but everyone is different, so the best thing is to test things out and see what works.

Other resources:

I have a short (but continually growing) YouTube playlist on palette building that could be useful too, and Kim Crick has a great feature on essential colours on her pigment database here which I find very useful.

I hope this is of at least a little use!

[fernlessbastard]

Hey! I just wanted to ask what kinds of brushes and watercolors you use for your drawings. I really like them! I’m also going to start to use watercolors to paint my traditional drawings. Could I have some tips as well?

Ok so this is a fairly long post.  I tried to be reasonably thorough, and I talk about paint, brushes, and gave some tips, as well as linked some brilliant videos - hopefully that helped :)) feel free to ask for any clarifications though! /gen

Oh, I've accumulated a large amount of watercolours over the years. This is my currently most used palette, that i’ve assembled myself from different palettes throughout the years:

My first set of watercolours was a small Winsor & Newton set, which included these:

I then got this set of Kuretake for my birthday:

And I got some shiny ones from Creadu, though I'm not sure if they're available internationally:

As well as some singular pans also from Winsor & Newton:

Then there's a set i have from my parents. These are older than I am, and some aren't very useable, over all they're pretty good, I'd say.  I have no idea what the brand is, though, or what brand would be closest to them, so that I could recommend it.

Regarding brushes, I’d say the more natural ones are simply incomparable to the cheap ones. I’d take 2 or even 1 good brush over a full set of those plastic ones anytime.

Here’s my full collection, though the plastic ones I use for gouache.  They simply aren’t suitable for watercolours, regardless of how much scammy brands try to convince you.

And these are the ones I use fur watercolours:

You can get some soft, round brushes for relatively cheap - you just need to find a nice art shop.  regarding size, I’d probably get a size 6 if you want to start off with just one brush, and sizes 5 and 10 if you can go for 2.  though that of course depends on how large you want your pieces, ect - but I feel like that’d be a pretty universal choice. I personally mostly use a 6, then go in with a 4 to add details, and add washes to the bg mostly with a 10 - my pieces are usually between half of an A5 sheet of paper, and an A4 one, so that should give you an approximate idea of what you might want to go for.  You need to keep in mind, that most brushes - even the bigger ones - will have a fine tip, when wet, so there really isn’t much of a need to buy anything below a 2, especially at the beginning - simply don’t push down too hard.

In regards to art itself - don’t use white watercolours the way you would with other paints.  Watercolour painting is using the negative space a lot of the time - the white watercolour is never going to be as vibrant and bright as the paper itself, not to mention it won’t be able to cover up the darker colours in the first place, seeing how it’s quite a bit transparent, as watercolours are.

That being said, I highly recommend you use white gel pens!  They can add a very lovely touch in general, not only in watercolours (you can see it in many of my pieces, seeing as I draw on a tinted paper a lot of the time).  Personally, I recommend gelly rolls.  I’ve bought a set of 3 a couple years ago, and they’re still working just fine.  In my experience these are the only gel pens that actually work, though keep in mind I’m from Poland, so there might be something better over where you live.

With watercolours you neeed to start off with the lighter colours, and add more and more dark ones, making sure to leave the brightest spaces blank, and not paint over them.  Be patient, wait for layers to dry, don’t rush it.  Watch videos of how people paint with watercolours, observe, try to learn through imitation!

Aditionally, try not to use blatant, black paint.  Try mixing a couple colours such as dark brown, dak blue, perhaps some red, a bit of yellow, ect - take your time time, and learn how your paint works, and how it mixes!  Ultimately, you don’t really need black and white paints most of the time for watercolours, unlike in other kinds of paint.

Here are some videos I remember being helpful to me personally:

this video by Emily Artful is honestly one of the best videos on that matter that I’ve watched

This video, as well as this video by Kasey Golden are also very helpful

I remember finding this video by Laovaan helpful as well

(for the record, all these three creators are brilliant artists that have helped me learn the medium quite a lot

Ultimately my watercolour and brush collections and skill have been growing over the past, well, more than 6 years, so be patient!

I hope that was helpful, but again, if theres anything else I could help you with, feel free to ask me :)

And have fun!! Good luck, dear!! You’re gonna do great, I’m sure! :DD

[incaseyouart]

Heya! I love your watercolor art, and so I got myself a nice watercolor set for Christmas! Do you have any protips?

Try out different paper types - start with mixed media, then try cold press, and hot press, just to experiment and see what you like. Also, if you didn’t already get these, I’d recommend getting Koi Waterbrushes!! Keep tissues nearby when you paint - if you make a mistake, you can easily wipe up the paint, because even though it dries pretty quickly, you can always add more water to the pigment to then wipe it away. 

[incaseyouart]

For the anon who has their paper curling up when using watercolors, use masking tape and tape the paper all along the edges on a flat surface/board. We do this in art class at my school and it helps a lot. Only things you have to make sure is that you don't take the tape off until it dries and make sure all the paper is taped down.

That works too! 

[incaseyouart]

So I saw that you do some watercolouring and I was wondering how do you keep the paper from warping? Or does your paper not warp when you use it?

I use really heavy paper made for watercolouring - if you use anything less than paper made for mixed media, then it will warp for sure. Try to get at least 100lb paper (the paper I used for watercolour is 140lb). I hope that makes sense!

[incaseyouart]

We have a watercolor assignment in art class and it'll be my first time dealing with watercolors! I've decided to do an ocean thing (it'll be my mother's Day present too! ) got any tips for beginners?

https://incaseyouart.tumblr.com/tagged/watercolour%20tips

https://thepostmansknock.com/painting-with-watercolors-for-beginners/

https://www.artistsandillustrators.co.uk/how-to/watercolour/439/how-to-watercolour-getting-started-with-watercolours

I personally would recommend these supplies:

Koi Waterbrush

Van Gogh palette set (12)

Canson cold press 140lb watercolour paper

Also go bug Hector (aka shittywatercolour) on Twitter and tell him I sent you.

Good luck!