watercolor tips and tricks

claquesous:

some tips and tricks that have seriously helped me in excelling at watercolour

1. PAPER WEIGHT. for the love of god do not use any paper under 110-120 lbs to paint with watercolour, a very VERY wet medium that will soak clean through the paper if it’s not thick enough (most paper pads sold at craft stores have the weight listed on them. printer paper is around 20 lbs, sketch pads will be about 60 lbs, IDEAL watercolour paper 140 lbs+). i use only 140 lb paper for my serious watercolour works. canson and strathmore are my favourite brands

2. there’s no need to have very expensive watercolour paints, but it is important to use something better than crayola. my dad gave me a 24-pan windsor&newton watercolour set when i was 8 and these are still the paints i use today (i was a very careful child, but i never even had to replace my paint pans after almost 10 years either, so this brand, while super expensive, lasts and earns my gold star.) some other cheaper options are: x and x

3. if you’re going to be using watercolours, prepare to use WATER. so many people forget this, but it’s so important to realise this media is meant to look translucent, so you should see the paper through the paint. if you can’t see it, then you’re using the paints as if they’re gouache or acrylics, so try using more water and work with lighter colours.

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OKAY NOW FOR THE ACTUAL TRICKS

4. SALT

image

quite overused in watercolour but it’s so freaking cool it can be pardoned. *remember for all of these effects, you have to use lots of water with the paint for it to work!

5. ALCOHOL/VODKA/HAND SANITIZER IF YOU’RE LAZY LIKE ME

image

you have to be very careful here because the second image can turn into the first if you use too much alcohol and it soaks through the water and paint gets in the spot, so be sure to experiment plenty before using this!!

but yeah you can use whatever clear alcohol you can find and it does p much the same thing

6. LIGHT SKIN TONES

okay while the darker skin tones are more easily achievable with browns and additional yellows/blues/reds to bring out the undertone, light skintones are hard as hell to make with watercolour because it’s hard to even think of what to mix. think no more!

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YELLOW OCHRE + ANY PURPLE = perfect skintone you can play around with. adding more of yellow or purple will give you either cool or warm skin tones you can build up on and layer until they’re the proper value. remember to use purple/cool shadows with skin in compositions with normal lighting!

7. PAYNE’S GREY

and finally to repeat my previous post, use PAYNE’S GREY instead of black for a richer, darker colour in your painting. don’t use black unless your entire composition has warm colours, but even then, try to use a very dark brown instead of black.

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8. WHITE

finally, it’s very important to mention this: never use the white watercolour they sometimes give you. EVER. EVER. dilute your paint with water instead to get a lighter value, or else you’re not using watercolour to its full extent (which is something you might struggle with if you’re used to using acrylics or oil)

that’s all i can think of at the top of my head, but if you have any questions or need further brand recommendations etc, feel free to message me!

insertgempridehere:

nohara:

kiwi:

kiwi:

HEY THIS IS IMPORTANT whats your favorite place to find drawing references?

so far we’ve got

  • senshi stock
  • croquis cafe
  • line-of-action.com
  • quickposes.com
  • posemaniacs
  • clip studio paint models
  • pexels.com
  • sketchdaily
  • eggazyoutatsu atarichan drawer

  • designdoll

if you have any more please reply!

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for Clothing refs,

Yesstyle.com

they have flattering and elegant clothing

poshtearex:

So I looked up funny wedding photos and I was not disappointed.

Like

These are all so wholesome and make for great draw the otp/draw the squad things for when you want to draw characters getting married but also be total dorks.

lilietsblog:

sarahculture:

Color Tutorial Part 4:
Color Picking and Palettes

Part 1 : Value – link
Part 2 : Hue and Saturation – link
Part 3 : Saturation & Color Mixing – link

Part 5: Digital Coloring Method – coming Feb. 22nd

Other Tutorials – link

Twitter  |  
DeviantArt

DESATURATED YELLOW LOOKS LIKE GREEN
YES
MY VISION IS VALIDATED
I KEEP SEEING PEOPLE WITH VERY PALE BLONDE-ISH HAIR AS HAVING GREEN HAIR AND PEOPLE KEEP GETTING WEIRDED OUT BY IT
BUT NO
THAT IS ACTUALLY NOW COLORS WORK Y’ALL JUST HAVE PRECONCEPTIONS OF WHAT COLOR HAIR CAN AND CANNOT BE

anyway this is fantastic and i’m off to go try this out ❤

severalsunlitmornings:

chamiryokuroi:

readableposts:

chamiryokuroi:

so let me show you all this one page i found out while doing homework. i had to do a floor plan for school and then found this

you can get an account for free. even if it only lets you make one plan, you can edit it as much as you want. 

you should have no problem making different stuff.

okay so you can do stuff like this one that is what I was looking for

now you must be thinking “chami what the fuck? what can i do with that?”

well if you click one little button that says 3d you get this!

motherfucking 3d view!! but wait! you obviously want to see the insides more right? 

idk for painting or editing or reference or whatever, well you can do it and then you get this!

i don’t know if you get why i am so excited but think about the endless possibilities! 

ok I know there’s stuff like google sketch up and yeah it is cool but I find it kind of difficult and this… this took me 30 minutes to finish! 

And there are so many things!! look at what i did for school

this is just so cool sorry i’ll shut up now.

[caps removed and spaces added for accessibility]

This is it, my most popular post ever. Once every third moon I see it gaining notes and I feel as if someone had gone on a heroic quest to bring it back from the darkest parts of my blog history.

the link above is broken, but the site is called floorplanner.com!!!!

your composition skills are so fucking amazing. every time i see your pieces and comic panels i know you made them based on the composition alone. do you have any favorite resources for learning to get better at it?

erysium:

hey thanks!! I think these 3 tutorials/resources are still really useful for composition basics:

Perspective+Composition tutorial by fox-orian

Composition tutorial by Kali Ciesemier

FZDSchool videos

Other than that, I think noticing what you find interesting in the world around you, & taking a lot of photos is a great way to practice composition! It gives you a good understanding of how playing with camera angles & perspective affects what you can fit inside an image – a lot of my personal work is inspired by something interesting I can’t capture with a photo

image

ricksketchbook:

Okay so it turns out my biggest pet peeve with amateur comics is people not knowing what proper reading order for word balloons is. You can’t just put them wherever is most convenient for the rest of the picture, unfortunately.

Naturally, this applies to English, manga has its reading priority facing the top-right of the panel instead, and tends to finish columns before continuing rows, on account of the native top-bottom right-left writing direction. (Though they still group panels into rows instead of columns, mind)