Watercolor General

[Anonymous No.4716231]

/WCG/

Watercolor thread. Post your own work, post inspo, ask questions, share resources, etc.

My objective is to be a watercolor artist, but I need to do Loomis etc to get my human forms down. Can I just use my wacom intuos S and not bother with pencil/charcoal?

[Anonymous No.4716258]

This looks really useful:
https://www.handprint.com/HP/WCL/book1.html

[Anonymous No.4716284]

>>4716231
Is that nickvrunge? His shit is so derivative especially with all the copycats

[Anonymous No.4716324]

>>4716284
>nickvrunge
Apparently, though I wasn't familiar with him.
https://www.instagram.com/p/B9_h96zJGHq/

Who are all the copycats, and why are they bad? Which artists *do* you like?

[Anonymous No.4716353]

>>4716231
i mean, if you wanna be a trad chad, you should be a trad chad. I don't think you'd gain much benefit from learning how to draw using a small intuos and then going to 1:1 traditional.

[Anonymous No.4716363]

>>4716231
weird thread timing tho, here's some crap i did last night. it's really tricky.

[Anonymous No.4716399]

>>4716324
I actually don't hate his art, and he uses the medium well, but he taught hundreds if not thousands of artists his methods and style, so it feels stale. I think the best watercolor artists use light and dark effectively, and don't try to force the medium to do stuff better suited for gouache and oil.
Pic related is Joseph Zbukvic who is pretty amazing to watch work.

[Anonymous No.4716525]

>>4716231
im gonna fuck with watercolor pencils soon, any tips/pitfalls to avoid?

[Anonymous No.4716542]

>>4716399
How should I be thinking of gouache in relation to watercolor? I'm a noob and haven't heard of goache until last week, honestly

[Anonymous No.4716544]

>can I just draw digital to become good at watercolor
...kek?

[Anonymous No.4716574]

>>4716542
Gouache is more opaque than watercolor. Some purists think that the only white in a watercolor painting should be the white of the paper, but it's pretty common for artists to add highlights with gouache or use colored pencils, pastels, acrylic, and oil to emphasize saturation.

[Anonymous No.4716581]

>>4716525
I'm kind of a brainlet so I didn't use water with them when I first tried them and a lady in my plein air group loled at me and showed me how to use them.

[Anonymous No.4716678]

>>4716353
Makes sense, thanks

>>4716544
I need to get figures and faces down, I already have a wacom tablet, and digital may allow quicker iteration

[Anonymous No.4716712]

I want to do more watercolor but it seems like such a chore to stretch paper all the time. Wat do?

[Anonymous No.4717203]

My family came to visit me and brought some watercolor as they know me as the “artsy” in the family. It’s some transparent water color “Koi” and some fake squirrel brushes. Last time I touched watercolor was 20 years ago as a child. How do I into watercolor?

[Anonymous No.4717209]

[Anonymous No.4717210]

>>4717203
Make sure you have good paper. I’m not really a fan of koi, but just play around and see if you like it. Watercolor can be really frustrating so it’s worth it to spend a lot of time learning how the different papers and pigments and water work. It dries lighter so it’s easy to mess up your values working too fast, having a good handle on how everything dries and seeing how wet into wet works will save you a lot of pain when you get more expensive materials.

[Anonymous No.4717245]

>>4716231
Anyone know good software for digital watercolor?
I want to make a webtoon but using watercolor as coloring method, so i need to do it digitally to minimize the error.
I just know Rubbelle and expressii, but i wonder if there more application similar to it focused on watercolor.

[Anonymous No.4717247]

>>4716525
Think of them more as water-soluable pencils and less as watercolor in pencil form. You can use water to blend them out, create hazy effects in the distance or flat first layers, but a good portion of details and shading should be done just with the pencils and no water.

>>4716712
You don't really have to stretch your paper for every single piece unless it's very thin and/or you want to work very large. Most people just tape it down to a flat surface with painters tape. If that's still too much effort, just buy blocks that are gummed on all four edges. More expensive, but also a lot more convenient.

>>4717203
Youtube is full of watercolor tutorials for beginners, there shouldn't really be a shortage of instructions. What kind of things are you interested in painting?

[Anonymous No.4717280]

>>4717210
I’ve got some Bristol paper, canson mixed media, cheap 12 sheet watercolor strathmore paper.
>>4717247
Not sure, I’ve never been too big on grandiose landscapes and the like. I was thinking mostly about making some nice flowers/ floral motifs or animals; perhaps use it to enhance some line art to color faces/clothes and such. I’m probably more inclined in the latter. On YouTube I saw this Shibasaki grandpa, he is rather
relaxing. I just finished arranging my paints to follow the rainbow in my wells.

[Anonymous No.4717410]

>>4716363
Noice. I think I've seen you post your digital stuff on here before, looks awesome in watercolor.

[Anonymous No.4717420]

>>4717247
>You don't really have to stretch your paper for every single piece unless it's very thin and/or you want to work very large. Most people just tape it down to a flat surface with painters tape. If that's still too much effort, just buy blocks that are gummed on all four edges. More expensive, but also a lot more convenient.

If I use more than a tiny bit of water the paper will buckle, even if it's 300 g/sq paper in a small gummed block.

From what I can tell from a lot of youtube tutorials you need to dampen the paper completely for several minutes, use lots of tape and attach it to a rigid board and then also staple it down to avoid the tape going loose. Seems like such a pain.

[Anonymous No.4717452]

>>4717420
Not OP, but I never skimp on watercolor paper. I started using arches brand and I never looked back

[Anonymous No.4718084]

>>4717280
Shibasaki is a great resource, so you're off to a good start.
Florals make up a huge portion of watercolor tutorials, so that's easy. Illustration is a bit tricky, even though a lot of people who still work traditionally use watercolor to color ink drawings, it's actually surprisingly hard to find specific advice on the subject. I recommend practicing basic techniques like wet-in-wet, wet-on-dry, glazing, negative painting, etc since they apply to everytihng. Then watch some speedpaints from watercolor illustrators and try to figure it out from there. A lot of Urban Sketching is ink and watercolor, so that might be helpful too if you need more specific advice.
(And paint on the watercolor paper. It's possible to paint on other surfaces, but it's harder.)

>>4717420
I use plenty of water and I've never had problems with paper buckeling in gummed blocks. I do go with 400 to 600gsm for blocks larger than A4 though.
What kind of paper are you using? If it's decent quality it really shouldn't give you so many issues, lots of plein air painters only clamp their paper to a board and don't even use tape and it still works.

[Anonymous No.4718906]

>>4717452
I don't really know the name of the paper I've tried, but I will give Arches a shot next time.

>>4718084
Interesting, I'll try with thicker paper than my current ones then and see how that works. I really like the process of watercolor but the buckling has kept me from using it more.

[Anonymous No.4718920]

>>4717280
>>4717452
this, the paper is argurably more important than the pigment (once you're using artist or pro paints). You can use the cheap paper to make gradient swatches to figure stuff out tho.

[Anonymous No.4719053]

>>4717245
If you can grab Corel Painter on one of those crazy sales, go for it. It has by far the most realistic watercolor, down to the gravity affecting the washes. I have no idea how Painter never got popular especially since Paint Shop Pro used to be the top software.

[Anonymous No.4719304]

>>4717410
thanks dude! Most of the time people tell me to kill myself when they recognize it. This would be something digital. I always go back and forth I'm incredibly fickle.

>>4717452
I use Cranson sketch books or whatever they're called. I have a ton of Arches hot press, but my big cry is that the paper when wet sort of has a wet sweater effect. The Arches is objectively better, but it's really irritating to use. I'm just being a pussy though.

[Anonymous No.4719971]

what weight paper is the minimum so it doesnt look like with watercolor
and is it okay to not tape it down or anything? im drawing in a sketchbook. pages are 117 lb.
lastly, do watercolors come out fine over a pencil sketch?

[Anonymous No.4721063]

>>4719304
Arches is known for being an especially thirsty paper, maybe try a different 100% cotton paper like Fabriano Artistico or Saunders Waterford next time. I know Arches is often talked about like it's the best paper there is, but I've personally always preffered others. That said, cotton papers are always going to be more absorbent than student grade ones and it can take some experience painting on them to get used to that. They are much better for wet-in-wet and glazing though, even if you don't know what you're doing yet.

>>4719971
You can put some light washes of color over sketches in sketchbooks , but the thinner the paper is the more likely it is to buckle. If the paper isn't meant for wet media it can also get damaged in the process, especially if you use lots of water or go over the same area several times while it's still wet. It should say somewhere on your sketchbook or in the product description online what mediums it's meant to be used with.
If you're a beginner I would recommend picking up some proper watercolor paper regardless, it'll make it easier to learn the basics. I actually think painting on papers not specifically meant for watercolor is a useful skill to have, but it's harder and therefore not a good starting point.

As for graphite, test on a scrap/small corner wether the wash will lift the lines or not. Some pencils dissolve with water, but most don't.

[Anonymous No.4721079]

>>4721063
I'm using a Strathmore mixed media sketchbook that says it's for dry/wet media so I'm unsure