No judging the outcome.Īs long as you’re using university student-grade to professional grade watercolors, paper and brushes, you’ll be fine. Put your experimental lab coat on, grab a book by an artist you like, and be ready to play with your paints, paper and brushes. Trial and Error should be a required workshop for beginner watercolor painters. It’ll also be a place of knit-brow confusion, because every watercolor artist has a different set of favorite colors, and best choice of brushes, and most frequently used watercolor papers.ĭon’t be frustrated by that, because those contradictions are proof that there is no right or wrong choice for quality pigments, paper or brushes. Your artists’ library of reference books will be your Go-To for inspiration, instruction and getting unstuck. I try not to confuse my rinse water with my after dinner beverage! ( Here is the finished watercolor study.) Bonus Round: Building an Artist’s Reference Library For such a small, simple little tool, I think this one is super handy. It helps keep my “where was I looking” distraction troubles in check. I can also check the accuracy of my painting by looking only at what’s in the frame of the Viewcatcher. I also squint to observe the real life color seen through the hole, so I can check it against the value of the color on my painting. Since the plastic frame is a 50% neutral gray, I can slide the centerpiece closed, and look through the hole to gage if a particular color on my source material is lighter or darker than gray. I also use it to mimic the shape of my sketchbook page, or watercolor paper, so my scene will fit on the paper. It allows me to see if adding or subtracting elements is helpful to the overall painting. I use the slider to crop sections of still life setups or landscapes. Hold it over a photo or a real life scene to isolate and choose compelling compositions, and you’ll notice smaller bits of beauty to paint. I have two of these handy little viewcatcher tools in my studio, and my travel bag. #4 Viewcatcher with Adjustable Aspect Ratio and a Value Checker Plus, tracing those lines will train your hand and eye to notice what matters the next time you freehand a sketch under your watercolor.Ī small but mighty tool for every artist – this viewcatcher helps you locate compelling scenes to paint, adjust the aspect ratio of the scene to patch your paper, and check the values in your subject against the values on your painting. The freedom to experiment, and start over if necessary when the drawing took 5 minutes instead of 5 hours is incredibly freeing. If you mess up, it’s no big deal, because you can trace that image five more times and begin again. The traced drawing is a little road map underneath the watercolor. This lesson is all about getting acquainted with your pigments and brushes. There’s no need to grip the brushes with white knuckles because you don’t want to mess up the drawing you just spent hours creating, right? Throw caution to the wind, because you traced the images. Take those five traced drawings, and give yourself permission to play with your paints, and do some experimenting. Here’s an exercise for beginner painters: using a light table (like this one), trace a favorite photo onto watercolor paper five times. If you’re short on time, new to drawing and painting, and the instructions for gridding and sight size drawing makes your head hurt, perhaps this tool will help you. These light weight, inexpensive LED light tables are so much easier to use compared to their big, clunky fluorescent uncles. Use tools to help map out the subject’s “parts”. □ That’s what painting and drawing feels like sometimes. It’s easier than spearing the entire pancake, and swinging the whole round of it into your mouth. Using a Grid System is like employing a knife to cut a big pancake into easily consumed bites. This will help break down complex subjects into positive and negative shapes.įocusing on shapes will help you spend less time “noodling” the details, so you can focus on the overall assemblage to give bigger impact to your final painting. Lay a grid on your paper that matches the grid in your viewfinder, and focus on drawing the shapes in each cube/square. This gridded viewfinder above will help you draw from life using the grid system. It’s a way to “Bite-Size” your landscape, your still life, your roomscape, or whatever you’re painting or drawing. Looking at your reference scene through the grid frame will help break down complex details into simple shapes, one square at a time. This gridded viewfinder can be worn on a lanyard while painting outdoors, en plein air, in your garden or out by the shore.
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