sleepingintheforest: snoozlebee: So here’s a...

sleepingintheforest:

snoozlebee:

So here’s a rough overview of how I go about painting with watercolors!

1. (Not pictured) THUMBNAILING! Nearly everything I bother bringing to a finished state these days starts its life as a tiny, sometimes inchlong sketch. This is a pretty good way of working out ideas w/out running the risk of spending a lot of time on something you end up absolutely hating.

After I have the thing I want to paint thumbnailed, I usually scan it in and refine the sketch in an image editing program. When I’m satisfied with THAT, I print it out and lightly transfer the drawing to a sheet of watercolor paper using a light table. (I used to just trace it directly off my monitor, which was irritating and extremely silly. Don’t do that, if you can help it.)

Sometimes, depending on the complexity of the picture, I ALSO do a super quick color sketch in photoshop to decide where I’m going to have the light directed, what color scheme I’m going to use, and so in, which I’ll use as a rough guide when I’m actually painting. In this case, I already had one in mind, so I didn’t bother.

2. ACTUAL PAINTING! I start off with a light, sloppy wash. In this case, I used yellow and sepia tones since I wanted the painting to appear somewhat sun-drenched. You can actually go a lot farther with the shading than I went here - remember, watercolors lighten as they dry.

3. Here I’ve started mapping out the main blocks of color in the painting. I like to go over the whole image in each pass, so I don’t end up with one part of the painting looking totally different from the rest. At this point I’m still sticking to really light, tentative washes.

4. Another pass of washes, slowwwwly starting to build up contrast in certain spots.

5. Added depth to the dragon by adding a pinkish wash in the shadowed areas of its body.

6. Mostly added little details on this pass.

This is by no means a definitive guide to painting, or anything. There’s a lot I have yet to learn about watercolors, and most of my work is done in halting, super careful baby steps. A FEW EXTRA TIPS:

- ALWAYS ALWAYS ALWAYS have a color scheme in mind. it will save you a lot of hemming and hawing in the middle of painting.

- experiment with paint combinations on scrap paper! if you’re not sure how a wash is going to affect a portion of your painting that’s already dried, test it out.

- keep tissues or paper towel handy for pulling up excess paint when it’s still wet.

- I ALMOST NEVER use black paint. Mixing darker colors is simple enough, and if I want to bump up the shadows in something I’ll mix a color with payne’s gray, which is less overpowering than black.

Rrrrraaaadddd