Watercolour traditions out the window, but only if you want to.
Happy art making folks. Hope you are all having a great beginning to what is about to be the month of June already! As mentioned in previous blogs, vlogs and videos, I have been investing in some water colour painting supplies. After excepting that painting large scale acrylic paintings, I was only going to focus on learning digital paintings and drawings on my iPad using procreate and the Apple Ipencil. But as mentioned in a previous video I was inspired by a perky young artist name Kristy Rice. It really helped to hear her encouragement and she also teaches in a way I had not experienced before. Ever since I took that Coollege Night class with my dear Dad over 30 years ago,
I had learned a lot at that night school college class. It was in the very traditional watercolour painting methods. Such as never, ever, ever use white water colour paint. You are to allow the white of the page to show through. That is what your white is with traditional watercolour painting rules. I did used to paint using gouache, because I had felt that it's opacity made it acceptable. This was before I took acrylic painting more seriously. Taking that watercolour class with my dad was a wonderful thing to do with him. And I made a couple cool paintings but, I actually found it intimidating and not impressed by the lack of colour that I need in my artwork. So I would defeat the purpose of the whole watercolour method. Being a heavy-handed artist for me means that I do not use a lot of water in watercolour paintings and I use a lot more paint so the images are brighter more colorful. So pretty quickly I worked mostly in coloured pencils when I couldn't use an easel and then acrylic painting once I had an easel that my dear Dad made for me.
(I believe God inspired this idea during one of my university art classes: I was asked by an art professor how I could draw or paint on a flat surface. Some thing I had grown up doing my whole life. I never ever thought of drawing or painting on an easel. She pointed out that when it image or a picture plane is up in front of your face you can see the perspective and proportion more accurately. Because of my neuromuscular disorder spinal muscular atrophy type three, I just did not have the strength to lift my arm up holding a paintbrush to a canvas. Then one day that eureka moment came! And I do believe it was from God. I got the idea to rest my elbow upper arm area on my desk edge. And then to lean my canvas against the back of the chair that goes with the desk. I'll come with my own chair anyway, ha ha because I use a wheelchair. And then it worked perfectly, I was able to paint using an easel for the very first time in my life. And this was later in life. I had been making art ever since I could basically hold a pencil. I will explain more in a future blog video about why I couldn't go to university to take art right out of high school. Let's just say I was able to enrol in my late 20s! )
I was working on building up a new pallet of higher quality watercolour paints and thought you might like to see what that look like so far.
Watch The short Video Below
The most exciting thing about being able to mix watercolour pigments is you can create your own colours and still let them harden or dry out in a little half pan or full pen, components. I must say I am slowly learning the benefits of watercolor. That I will be able to go outside and paint without worrying about the paint drying too fast. Acrylic paint requires having a spray
bottle of water with you at all times. Working outside is basically impossible because if it gets the wind happens, it will dry faster. And watercolour just like its counterpart gouache, can be reconstituted or rewetted every time you want to use it. It lasts for a very long time. And since I wasn't able to do tiny work when I used acrylic. If you've seen some of my personal art history videos, you'll notice that the paintings aren't exactly small. However, using watercolour I have discovered that as long as the brushes are tiny enough, I am feeling more comfortable about working on a smaller scale. Before this the thought of working or painting in small-scale would intimidate the heck out of me.
Colour mixing 101
I believe I did learn this most beneficial information when I did take that watercolour class. If it wasn't then, I know it was a long time ago. That you do not have to buy every mixed paint colour there is. If you were starting out as an artist or dabbling in it because you're curious about becoming an artist. Or you're just someone wanting to have fun with art making materials like paint and don't have a lot of money, this will help you like it help me. There are three colours in the world that cannot be manufactured, meaning by mixing certain other pigments or colours together. The best example that modern folks might find easier is looking at your printer ink cartridges. Did you ever wonder why just three colours yellow magenta and cyan blue along with a black, can print anything in any colour you want? It is because those three colours yellow red or in the case of magenta it's a cool red, and the yellow is a cool yellow, and the cyan is a cool blue. When layered or mixed as they are in paint. That's resulting in the creation of secondary colors. If the first three are called primary colors, meaning single or one, then taking one primary and another primary and mixing them means to or secondary colors. Making your own colour wheel may really help lay this out in your mind. No again I learned this a long time ago, and this next part I learned then too. At first I was excited and thought yeah, I can just make whatever colour I want and I will get the results in an inexpensive way. However, the main blue I had was called ultramarine blue, and yellow was lemon yellow and a cadmium yellow (a warm yellow) and an alizarin crimson and most likely a cadmium red middle or cad red deep. When I started mixing the pairs that would make the secondary colors. I was very disappointed that ultramarine blue and a warm yellow made a very dull green. And alizarin crimson and a warm yellow again didn't quite make the orange I was thinking of, ultramarine blue and alizarin crimson made it dark purple. But none of that secondary colours were that impressive. Thankfully I experimented with the other kinds of blues yellows and reds that I had. Turns out the kind of secondaries you get depend on the type of primaries you use. Just like your printer ink, are those three colours always plus black (which technically in the art world is not a colour it is absence of light and white is all light at once- hopefully I've explained that correctly) Black and white are used to tone down or lighten a hue.
So I discovered to get nice bright colours I had to use more cool colors. If you're asking what are cool and warm colors? I'm gonna let you think about that as you look around the world and that artwork. Think about it even as you use your art supplies if you have any. What colours feel cool and wet colours feel warm.'
In the future I hope to elaborate more regarding colour theory and about colours that are manufactured through using synthetic pigments. In the history of painting, we know as early back as cave paintings, that the images found in there are often made out of things called yellow or red ochre or iron oxide. Those are pigments ground up into a fine powder and a binder possibly egg yolks and water, and then creating early paints.
And to get brilliant colours like lapis lazuli which is a gemstone, it would be ground and ground into a very very fine powdered pigment. These kind of pigments still exist. There's lots of videos on YouTube you can find about people making their own natural pigments. But I want to talk more about creating the colours that make you happy. For me personally that means creating mega bright colours.
Thanks for stopping by and we will see yo
u soon. Please don't forget to like, share, and subscribe if you like to on the YouTube channel and the blog. Those actions definitely help improve the odds of people being able to find my channel.
