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Hey guys I hope this is the right thread but I tried my first watercolor project today and it was really bad and now I would like some advice. I tried to follow a tutorial:  My result:  uhmmmm van Gogh travel color set, Canson Montval paper, Da Vinci synthetic brush Whenever I mixed on the van Gogh palette, it felt like my brush sucked up more of the color than it dispersed. Then on the paper, I found it incredibly hard to control the pigment/water. Sometimes I'd do a wash and run out of color halfway through, and sometimes it was the opposite. When I tried to go back in and apply more color to darken an area, or when I added water to smoothen a transition, it was like I sucked up what was there instead, and then the remaining pigment pooled up and I just pushed the stupid pool around on increasingly water-colored paint the more I worked on it. I probably sound naive but I always thought you just put the wet brush on the paper and the paint comes out. For the background washes I'd paint wet on wet and the layer of wet would always feel either too wet or too dry. By the time I was ready to go and I was at the bottom it would already be dry again. But somehow whenever I drew straight from the pan onto the dry paper the color would stick on top like a wet drop. There's a passage where she paints tractor tracks onto the ground and then fades them out with water and then uses some of that pigment to further texture the ground and add some shadows and pffffffrrrrrrrt I laid down the first track and it became a puddle. Laid the second track down, tried to suck off some water with a paper towel, all the paint was gone. Really cool.  The color is too bright because by that point I was tired to trying to mix and 100% worked straight from the pans. I think later I slapped some black on top, if you scroll back up you can see what fine-detailed texture work I turned that into. Sometimes when I did washes, flakes of something (paper?) started rubbing off so I'm not sure if it's a mix of bad material and my inability to manage water/pigment ratio. I think my brush is also too big for the tiny travel pots in the set, so come to think of it, it might just have been that I was unable to balance out the water in my brush with the right amount of pigment. Not sure if that's a thing. In the video she doesn't show herself watering/drying her brush so that doesn't help. I'm glad for any pointers of what to do better for my next grand project. If nothing else I hope this at least makes aspiring artists feel a little more confident about themselves. 
Entenzahn fucked around with this message at 01:10 on Apr 8, 2020 |
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Apr 8, 2020 01:08
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| # ¿ Apr 16, 2024 10:04 |
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This is the tutorial in question I actually have Arches cotton paper! But I wanted to save it for when I'd start drawing proper works. Seems like this is a common mistake. I might save the Montval to sketch or practice gradients and work on the Arches for now. I've ordered some painter's tape and a porcelain palette, so hoping this will erase some of the hassle. The Princeton Neptune is not available here (looks like there's a huge difference in what brush brands are available in Europe vs America) but I'll look for something similar. I'm not sure about the brush size though. Mine is already twice as large as the pan and it feels akward. But I'll give it a try. I've got a lot of leftover beer money since the lockdown hit so if all else fails I can still order a set with larger pans. I'll definitely practice more gradients and washes. Thank you everyone for the advice and all the links you've sent, I'm taking a look at all of them. Captain Lime is pretty dope lol I'll be back.
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Apr 8, 2020 21:08
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Angrymog posted:Paging Entenzan. lol gently caress this is way better. you even used cheap paper too, guess I just need to practice more  thanks for sharing
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Apr 14, 2020 21:38
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Angrymog posted:I did the pink sunset too (just Cotman and Sennelier, not with the Kuretakes), on Aldi, Bockingford (sort of equivalent to the paper you used), and Daler Rowney's Langton Prestige (100% cotton) and the mid-range paper came out the worst I think; even did one of them twice on it. Will post if you want. Sure, I'd like to see that. Are size 6 brushes uniform in the US? Everyone recommends those but when I've shopped around here I noticed that depending on manufacturer they range from like 3-8mm, so some size 6 brushes are literally twice as large as others.
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Apr 15, 2020 22:31
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I got some new gear like this thread recommended, but I also got a Raphael Kolisnky brush. I know I don't need it, but I was curious how it was different from my synthetic brushes. So I dipped it in the pan and painted a column to test it (kind of like a wash). This happened:  (no color on the brush because I recreated the scenario with clear water for the picture) Is this normal, or should I return it? I thought these brushes were expensive because they hold their shape so well.
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Apr 21, 2020 23:25
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| # ¿ Apr 16, 2024 10:04 |
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It goes back into form after I wet it and tap it a couple times, but it doesn't hold very well as soon as I start moving sideways. I may ask the store to return it for a different one. If I still have the same problem then it's probably me.
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Apr 22, 2020 14:13
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