Watercolor Painting for Dummies (10 page)
Read Watercolor Painting for Dummies Online
Authors: Colette Pitcher
Tags: #Art, #Techniques, #Watercolor Painting, #General
Each
primary color
(red, blue, and yellow) has two
biases
(or leanings) — that is, an underlying tone of one of the other primary colors. So red can be biased blue or yellow, for example. Chapter 5 covers colors and bias in more detail.
To start painting, you need two tubes or pans of each of the primary colors, one tube or pan in each bias. Armed with these six colors, you can paint the world. A bare-bones paint set would include cadmium red, alizarin crimson, ultramarine blue, phthalocyanine blue, lemon yellow, and gamboge. You may find a kit that contains everything.
You can purchase plenty of luxury colors too. Tubes or pans of these free up your time from having to mix them. My favorite luxury colors are burnt sienna, hookers green, and burnt umber.
After you have the basics of brush, paint, and paper, you still need a few extras to make painting more than a possibility. The good news is that you can find most of these extra supplies around the house.
Water container:
You need water to rinse your brush, so you need a container to hold water. Your container doesn’t have to be fancy. It can be as simple as a plastic cup, as long as it’s stable enough not to tip over. You can go the fancy route and buy a container with ridges in the bottom to give you something to rub your brush over to loosen sticky paint, although watercolor paint is pretty gentle and rinses completely and easily. Divided containers let you have a dirty-water rinse well and a clean-water rinse well. Some containers have a rim with holes where you can stand brushes upright for easy access.
Palette:
A
palette
is a white container to put paints on. You need a white palette because white is the best color to gauge colors against. (When you think of a palette, you may imagine a kidney-shaped wooden board hand-held by an artist wearing a beret. That’s an oil painter’s palette. Oil paints are thick and don’t run. Watercolor is liquid so you need a deeper palette.)
A very simple watercolor palette is a disposable foam plate, but you can choose from many styles if you want to purchase one — round and square shapes are the most popular.
Figure 2-2 shows a variety of palettes.
Most palettes have a mixing area and wells around the perimeter to hold paints. The number of wells varies, so decide whether you want many wells to hold lots of different colors or fewer but larger wells to hold more paint and accommodate bigger brushes. Some palettes have lids to prevent paint from spilling, which is especially nice if you plan to take your supplies to classes.
I tell you how to set up your palette in the aptly named section “Setting Up Your Palette for the First Time” a little later in the chapter.
Figure 2-2:
A pile of palette of choices.
Sponge:
I talk about a variety of sponges you can use to create special effects in Chapter 4, but your basic, everyday cellulose sponge in any size or color is a must-have to help you control water as you paint. Dampen the sponge, wring it out, and place it beside your water container. You rinse your brushes in the water container and touch the brush against the sponge to get rid of any excess water. This prevents getting too much water on your painting. When you finish painting for the day, place the damp sponge in your lidded palette to keep the paints moist for the next day.
A box of tissues or a roll of paper towels:
Tissues are handy as blotters when you have too much water on the painting. Paper towels or old cloth towels work well too. Having a tissue at the ready in your nondominant hand is a good plan. You can control water in your brush or dab at a puddle in your painting.
Spray bottle:
You need to have some type of spray bottle handy so you can wet down paint on your palette when it dries out and wet down your paper as needed. My favorite spray bottle is an old pump-action window cleaner bottle. Unfortunately, this type of bottle may be difficult to find. A trigger sprayer is a handy tool. It can be fun to collect different spray patterns for different splatters in the paint.
Miscellaneous goodies to collect:
Here are more items I use in different projects in this book: a stapler and staples, masking fluid, bar or liquid soap, a blow-dryer, old toothbrush, brush holder for storage, pencil, graphite paper, a red ballpoint pen, credit card or plastic knife for scraping, razor blade, sketchbook for thumbnail sketches, tracing paper, and a kneaded eraser. Optional supplies include gum arabic, a board to stretch paper on (1/2-inch Gatorfoam), and gloves for handling paper. You don’t need all of these supplies at once. Acquire them as needed.
Setting up your palette is something it pays to do right the first time so you can put the same color in the same well again and again without having to think about it. This section offers tips on making your palette artist-friendly.
If you have a new plastic palette, take a minute to scrub it gently with a scouring pad and a little scouring compound. This removes the shiny surface and prevents the paint and water from beading up when you try to mix them.
Most palettes have
wells
around the outside edge to hold pure pigments and a
mixing area
in the center. You use the mixing area to add water to paint to make it flow better or to mix paint colors to create a new color.
To set up your palette, follow these steps:
1.
Get out all the tubes of paint you want to put on your palette.
2.
Imagine your palette as a color wheel, as shown in Figure 2-3, and set each tube next to the well that it may occupy.
If your palette is square, start on one side and arrange the colors by ROYGBV (red, orange, yellow, green, blue, and violet). If you want, you can include your browns between the reds and oranges because browns are a form of orange and red.
Figure 2-3:
The palette as color wheel.
By setting all the tubes out before you fill the wells, it’s easy to change your mind, and you can rearrange the colors until they’re in their best positions.
If you have more wells than paint tubes, leave a well between the colors to allow some expansion later. Anticipate where you might want to expand your paint colors.
3.
Squirt half a tube of paint in each well.
If the paint is dry enough to hold the shape of the hole when it comes out of the tube (like toothpaste does), add some water and mix it until the paint relaxes and fills the bottom of the well.
Use a permanent marker to label each paint color on the outside of the well it’s in. When paint is dry and dark, it’s hard to remember which color is which without a name. If you change colors later, you can remove the name with a scrubber sponge or steel wool.
4.
Replace the caps on the tubes and start painting.
Make sure paint tube lids and the threads on the tubes are free of paint before replacing the cap. Paint can act like glue when it sets on the threads of the tube, and the next time you try to loosen the cap, it’ll twist the metal tube, possibly breaking it open.
Arthritic hands will enjoy smoothly turning lids if you smear a little petroleum jelly on the threads before resealing.
There’s no waste in watercolor pigment. If paint dries out, just add water to rehydrate it. So don’t be afraid to put a generous amount of pigment in the well. A tiny pea size will just be inadequate.
