I tried something completely different with my latest painting. I initially drew with pencil. Then rather than inking and erasing the ink, I painted watercolor over the pencil. After finishing the painting part, I inked with a Micron pen. Here’s how it turned out: Do I like it? Well, it’s Read more…
You may have heard of watercolor boards before. No, not the wooden board you use under your watercolor paper. I’m talking about a watercolor board, which is really just a board glued to watercolor paper. Canson makes the most available product, which I’ve seen at a few art stores. I’m Read more…
OK, very important question.. Do you ink before or after you paint? If you ink after you paint, then the pen doesn’t matter as much. You’ll have a lot more options. Of course, you’ll want to try out your pens on either a test painting or your watercolor notebook where Read more…
Everyone makes mistakes. So I got good news and bad news. The bad news first. When you make a mistake with watercolors, it’s not like a digital painting where you can just hit undo. Also, watercolors aren’t opaque either so covering it up takes a little bit of creativity. Then Read more…
Earlier, I said that there are four brands that I’ve used and recommended – Daniel Smith, Winsor and Newton, Sennelier, and the Blick generic artist grade paints. All four are good. I’ve used bad paints before but I don’t talk about anything I don’t recommend. I’ll only discuss brands I Read more…
Before I got into watercolors, I did a little bit of research. I didn’t just want to dive in. I wanted to have a good idea of how to get started. Of these 5 things to know before getting started with watercolors, the main one, I got from an old Read more…
What’s the difference between hot press and cold press watercolor paper? Well, I’m going to answer in two ways. First, I’ll briefly reply the technical terminology so you’ll know why they’re called cold press or hot press. Then, I’ll explain the differences. How cold press and hot press watercolor papers Read more…
Maintenance. Whatever you do, you have to maintain your tools. This could apply to anything from being a car mechanic to a hairdresser. If you don’t take care of your tools, your tools won’t work right for you. The same applies to artists. You have to take care of your Read more…
When you’re starting your watercolor journey, you really don’t need to start with a million different paints. You really only need three – yellow, red, and blue. Why those three? Because you can mix every other color from those three. “What about white?” You get white by simply leaving the Read more…
Until it happened, I’ve only read about getting mold in your watercolor tubes. I never thought it would happen to me. Until it did. I opened up my tube of black gouache and yuck! Fuzzy white stuff. I knew what it was immediately and promptly threw out the tube. Luckily, Read more…