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i need help a bit
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Message
Posted
@Denise: yes, you're right, it's my very first portrait...an attempt. And orcs are nice too...sometimes... @Skylar: that's a good tip! thank U! @Carol: No I do not want that. thanks for respecting. @Paul: Thank you for your very good input regarding fear :) @Sylvia: I think about it often, hehe :)Well I can honestly say that I have never met one! Thank you for sharing your Hobbit art. The road to self-satisfaction in Art is littered with abandoned works and paint splodges :-)
Edited
by James Robert Endeacott
Posted
You can still save this - they say you can't correct watercolours, but - you can. Mindful of Skylar's advice, with which I agree, you could carefully wash some of your paint off with clean water, blot it away without scrubbing at the paper, and reinstate the drawing when dry. There may be a limit to how many times you can do this - but there are watercolourists far better than I who have plunged a whole painting into the bath to wash the bulk of the paint away (it will be a problem with dye-based colours, like Prussian and Pthalo Blue, and Pthalo Green - but it doesn't look as if you used those).
Take a look at Charles Evans' watercolour videos on YouTube - in several of them, he tackles (rather forcefully) the idea that you can't alter a watercolour once painted. He also has a book on correcting mistakes in watercolour - along with many others.
You might alternatively want to save yourself the faff, and start all over again - if you do, then yes: get a drawing in that will help you to establish the forms; you could strengthen it with either waterproof ink (like a Unipin - look out for the words "pigment ink" - or Indian or carbon black; even a coloured ink; I like to use the FW brown inks) or an optical black watercolour on a fine brush.
Posted
You can, as Robert quite rightly points out, salvage a watercolour. The addition of gouache generally does the trick for me.
If it gets to the stage that you need to immerse the whole sheet of paper into a tub of water, my advice is to just start again afresh…
It’s never easy or successful to retrieve a bad watercolour… and I speak from experience here!
Posted
You could always jump in and give yourself a spruce-up at the same time! But no - I agree with Alan, I wouldn't actually go to those lengths - much quicker to start all over again.
I've got a book somewhere, not Charles Evans', as it happens, in which the wash-off technique is demonstrated; but - I've got a lot of books... quite where it is I don't know without launching a search. It just occurs to me though, while wittering on as one does - there are acrylics which can save a watercolour, not only gouache. But choose those acrylics carefully - you need one capable of great dilution: Chromacolour has saved a few of my watercolours, and I've painted in Chromacolour so that you can hardly tell the difference: though I think a very searching look would give it away. I think it's still the case that you can only buy Chromacolour from their website - I've used them quite a bit, and they've been very satisfactory.
Still - I know some of us would scorn such measures, and inist on sticking to pure watercolour; and I do respect that. It is unique.
Posted
Thanks you all for your good tips about saving watercolor! In fact, the view I was previously told is that a watercolor can never be “repaired”! My own biological father (artist) used to say back in his day: Every line you paint is finished, irreparable and inevitable - and that used to really cause panic in me, help, every line has to be right, you can't do anything wrong - terrible. If you had told me back then, hey, go into the bathtub with your "work" or take it into the shower and see what happens; I would have been very grateful, but yes, it was a different time back then :) I'd rather start a new sheet of paper; and just keep this as it is now.
Posted
OK, I think I have to start somewhere else, I'm having a lot of trouble with watercolor for a portrait. I'm now starting to draw faces with 3 different gray pencils and 3 brown tones, normal colored pencils from Caran D'ache. So I hatch the shadow areas and learn to "differentiate"... and then maybe I can still do a few blobs of watercolor. Well, I'm not proud, I'm more likely to let my pants down here.......but you give me the courage to even dare to take portraits :)
WIP ......... and WFK
