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useful tips for warercolour newbies
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Message
Posted
An old towel to protect the worktop also doubles up for brush wiping and dabbing - I use it all the time for acrylic inks and often when painting watercolours. Also if you use a sculpted towel it can be used for 'printing' textures on your painting surface - great especially if you are into abstracts. .
Posted
Many new artist's starting out have the notion that you need to trawl through all those colourful art catalogues and spend an absolute fortune on all this fancy stuff, and that's not difficult to do as we all know. But you don't need to... to start off with all you will need are a few basic tools, 3 brushes and 5 watercolours, pans or tubes, it makes no difference, and learn to mix your colours.
Get yourself some cheap (but not nasty) practice watercolour paper, available from Ken Bromley or Jackson's now stock it I think and just go for it, ( a selection of different papers and grades) spend some time on washes, graduated washes, simple basic techniques which if you don't master you will probably fail and may lose interest. Yes, you may want a 2B pencil perhaps and a few more odds and sod's but keep it simple.
Finally, forget all about these fancy desk-top drawing boards, a waste of money and useless for watercolour, get a piece of MDF of better still plywood say 1/2 imperial size so that you can rest your arm when working on detail. You only need a small angle on the board so use a couple of books underneath when applying your main washes, this way you can lift the board away and direct the flow if necessary. Just KEEP IT SIMPLE.
Posted
I identify with that - my "drawing board" is a large piece of plywood (MDF would have been better; fewer splinters...) on which I stretch my watercolour paper, paint, and draw; my brush rest is an old bit of plastic channelling, for want of a better word, left behind by the window fitters in a previous abode (so I've had it for 16 years and it works fine), my mahl stick is a length of ancient bamboo garden cane, with a ball of cotton wool on top held in place by a patch from my defunct pyjamas secured by a discarded shoe-lace, and my favourite palette was made for me by a friend from an offcut of plywood (if you're looking in, Bob, could you enlarge the thumb-hole a bit?).
My brushes are made from dowelling with a bit of badgers' tail on the end .... no, that's a lie. I confess that this is pure fiction - the badgers struggled so, and can be nasty brutes when roused...
Point is: I like to spend my money on good paint, durable and rewarding surfaces, and brushes that don't moult when I'm trying to paint with them. There are one or two things I ought to be thinking about buying - a double-dipper with a lid would be wise; I COULD do with a new easel.... but after 50 years you get attached to what you've got. Of course artists' suppliers have got to live too, and they fill their catalogues with endless desirables which I do indeed desire. Why not buy them, if you have the cash - the viewfinders (but I do have hands for that purpose), the light and shade meter, the light-box, the templates and set squares, and all the rest of it; it you believe in and need retail therapy, splurge away! But you don't actually NEED these things, any more than you need a huge range of ready-mixed paints - good paint, and not too much of it; a few good brushes, and they don't have to be sables for watercolour either (although one good rigger, and a good pointing brush, will pay for themselves many times over) and orf you go..
http://www.isleofwightlandscapes.net
http://www.wightpaint.blogspot.co.uk
Edited
by RobertJones
Posted
Ah Robert a mail stick is so handy ,,as single man like you has a bit of back ache and no one handy to rub on the rubbing oil on for you ..;drop some out on
ta a flat sided mail stick ball .and do it yourself by hanging over your shoulder
sorry Syd thats not on your thread ,,mind you .me old mate .but haven't you been guilty more times than any one
Posted
Of course Syd, I know many people like to use them for watercolour and that a drawing board is also needed, but my point was that it is not essential to have one, just a board on a desk and maybe a book or two for the angle is sufficient, that's all I've ever used but we all have different ideas and ways of working, there is no hard and fast rule in painting.
I suppose that the point I was trying to make in my comments to 'newbies' is that you don't have to have all these aids, but I do agree with Robert regarding spending your money on decent paint and brushes will help in the long run.
Now if we are talking oil painting that is a whole new ball game, an easel is virtually a must have, I myself have two large H-frame easels in my studio, why two?, well because I generally work on two paintings at a time due to the long drying process and very often these can be 4-footers so difficult to store anywhere whilst drying, sorry, gone of the subject rather but at least it's about painting.
Posted
Saw a few of those of Facebook, Syd - I don't want to be cruel (mind you, it's fun now and then) but don't they LOOK? The sea has got to be straight at the horizon: unless you're wanting to re-write the laws of physics.....I don't use a ruler to get this effect, because I can usually do it (photographing it properly is another matter) but unless people are thinking that the sea won't pour out of the frame I don't know what they think they're doing....
Still, I suppose this is one of those things that's obvious when you know, and not when you don't. Even so - painters all: go and look at the horizon; land slopes, yes; but water lies flat. Put your wonky photographs away and look at the real world in front of you.....
http://www.isleofwightlandscapes.net
http://www.wightpaint.blogspot.co.uk
