[Isric]

...for some good old traditional medium. Watercolor has been a favorite of mine for a while, but I'm highly inexperienced. This was my first try in nearly a year.
Anyone else do watercolor here? Can you help me? Tips, simple techniques?

[sear]

i love it

[Joachim]

nice Isric !! Yes, you are tempting me as well. Sadly I have never done any watercolors in my entire life. But, This weekend I will go up in the mountains and paint some fancy nature stuff, so hopefully I will learn a few things then. anyway, back to my point...I like it a lot

[Waldo]

Keep it wet. I've used watercolor quite a bit and certainly don't consider myself a pro, but will offer some of my tips. I usually wet the area I'm going to work on first before applying any paint. Keep a couple of tubs of water handy. One for mixing and one to keep as clean as possible for keeping your work area wet. And I use larger brushes for doing this. You have some nice bold washes that work well, but you also have some blotchy areas. Keeping this wet and working color in with gradual washes can help this. When pulling washes for large areas, keep A LOT of paint ready if you're looking for a consistant wash. If you've mixed a color and run out of paint, mixing and matching again is next to impossible in my experience. I also keep a lot of paper towels handy. You can get some interesting looks by blotting with one crumpled up. Try laying in a wash, dry your brush out, then lay your brush back down on the wash. You'll draw paint back into the brush and this can help in creating gradations.

Anyway enough of my incoherence. Hopefully that may help and hopefully someone with more experience can offer better tips. I just reread you replies so far, and Anthony's suggestion of applying a mid-value wash over the entire area can be useful, too.

I enjoy your work and look forward to more. Good luck!

[Plouffe]

nice characters and good start in watercolors =).. I got some tips for you because i did a huge water color painting for my final mark that i handed in 2 weeks ago.. Dont have a scan of it because its like 40 inches by 20 inches... Anyways

What makes water color different is that you cant add white. This means that you have to plan very carefully where will be reflexion or white spots and what not. Going over water colors with just white paint wont de the job. I know from experience. Also It really depends what end product you want to decide what technics you should use. For instance, like waldo said i think you should wet the surface first. That can be good but then it is really hard to controle how the paint will lay donw on paper. It will be very unpredictable. So weting your brush with color than putting on paper is a more reliable way to do nice and conform washes.

Also the more color you add over each layer of color the more muddy and yucky it will be. Dont forget to put the lighter colors firts because once their is color their is no way back But you can always try to soke a peice of tissu and absorb the color off..

A good water color paper is always good. if the paper is crappy you will know because once it dried up you will see it make mountains and crumple all up.....

Theirs all sorts of technics. Dry brush, wet on wet, wet on dry, using salt or sand could be helpfull getting textures and what not..

Well i think thats about what i have to say. My teacher used to be a college teacher soo he gave us lots of tips. If you need help with anythign i got about a dozen of pages of technics and explanations BUT they are all in french =( doh...

peace.. just icq me ...

[Akolyte]

Nice work Isric. For some reason, I usually end up in a violent temperment after using watercolors. They're really unforgiving.

[Basement bound]

Balls, man, balls. I am a bit afraid of attemptng water colours.
As to what you are studing, I feel your delema. Do you have some images of sculpture you have done, love to see it.

[Vgta]

Hey that's pretty cool. I've never messed with watercolors before...er, well I have but it was a mess.
Love the expression of the guy on the left.
as far as comments, well the light sourcing seems to be different for both characters, or it might just be me...everything else looks really cool.

[agent44]

THis is great. I love watercolor, your makin' me itchy to do one. THe colors ar great, characters are perfect. Don't you just love the texture you get with it?
and I just receintly did an inkwash, here hate the face and it's a little dark but I like the desaturated feel.
An way you done good.

edit: messed up.

[ June 07, 2001: Message edited by: agent44 ]

[Anthony]

Hey there Isric, looks neat. With watercolors, with most beginners in the medium, you want to start with a bright, colorful wash over the whole canvas. You can always go back and muddy it or darken it or even lighten it slightly, but you can't bring back those colors. Be ultra loose. Don't worry about picking at the canvas with small strokes. One of the most beautiful aspects of water color is the blending of colors, going over lines, etc. Once you keep improving, you can start to control more if you want, ala that Superman artist. Keep it up, watercolors are the most fun medium I think.

[Weirdowe]

del

[n8]

hey cool...im doing watercolour and landscape as sum subject at uni for would u believe graphic design??...anywho, the teacher guy told us thats theres a whole buncha techniques to use and there is a variation of the one the guys were talkin about before is very time consuming. What you want to do is to wet the section of the paper that you want to paint on first..then wash the paint onto that area, doing this will let the colour spread to the edges of the wet section creating a nice line, you wait for this to dry then u continue with the next shape etc.. then you want to layer more on and keep doing that till you get nice forms and that kinda stuff happening, but be warned to be patient and let it dry before applying more otherwise it will bleed together...unless you want that to happen...or sumthing....ive just had a few drinks and ma heads feelin funny...ill stop now