Watercolors

I recently started getting back into sketching and that has been going well.  I've never really stopped sketching throughout my entire life so I wouldn't expect to have any problems with refining my sketching abilities again.  Painting, however, is something I haven't done much of in many decades.  Watercolor painting is actually something I've never been comfortable with even when I was an active artist in school as well as college.  In college, every art-related class I took was sketching, engineering drawing and architectural renderings in graphite only and then blueprinted.  Back then, we didn't have all large format color printers using today's printer technology.  We only had large format blueprinting available.  Consequently, it made no sense to render any original drawings/sketches in color.

Lukey and Kenzie were staying with us for the long holiday weekend last weekend and they also did some sketching but I noticed that they were very reluctant to use their watercolors.  They used their crayons and colored pencils but wouldn't touch their watercolors.  (Note:  I tried using their colored pencils this weekend and I have to say that they absolutely suck!  They were so hard that it was almost impossible to draw a simple color swatch with one pencil when I tested it.  They really should be drawing with a better quality pencil.  When I picked up their pencils this weekend, I found these cheap pencils included with their art kits to be absolutely useless.  I really should go back to one of those art kits to test all the pieces of the kit.)  

I've always been a bit afraid of watercolors too so I understood Lukey and Kenzie's hesitancy to start using this type of paint.  Painting in watercolors is quite different than painting in acrylics and oils.  I decided that perhaps I should come up with a few very simple watercolor paintings so I might be able to inspire them a little bit after seeing these simple paintings and entice the kids to start using watercolors too.  

I haven't touched any watercolors in many decades but I do remember that I found them difficult to use due to how transparent they can be, how thin they are, and how much they can bleed into other colors.  The kids also mentioned that they prefer using acrylics but I felt it would be in our best interest to understand watercolors better especially since I enjoy sketching.  Since I lean toward sketching structures from an architectural viewpoint, I know that sketching and watercolors go together well but not until you understand all the quirks of using watercolors effectively.

I set up a small area in the living room on our coffee table to play around.  My plan was to experiment to see what happens with watercolors using various techniques.

I chose to start with creating a few "abstract" paintings.  These were abstract only in the sense that they would not attempt to be realistic paintings of tangible things.  They weren't abstract in the sense that they evoke a feeling of something specific in the real world as abstract paintings are supposed to do.  With this little first exercise, however, I quickly realized that I am still having difficulty grasping the quirks of watercolors!  

I had difficulty in keeping things from getting muddy but I knew that I was not being patient enough in letting each layer dry fully before starting on the next layer.  This problem added to getting some muddy results.

Another problem I realized I had was that I was not blending colors enough.  I was pretty much sticking with the colors straight out of the pan.  After doing a few small abstracts, I realized that my colors were too saturated.  Although the abstracts don't look terrible, what I envisioned was less saturated.  Worse yet, what I was attempting to do, never materialized.

This one, below, was actually my first one.  This was mostly a wet-on-wet painting.  At the end of this wet-on-wet exercise, I decided to see how spattering would work out because I figured the kids would like doing that.  (Next time I'll be sure to cover my paint pans before spattering.)  

After that first set of abstracts (the ones at the bottom of the photo below), I also realized that I need to choose a palette of only a select few colors.  

Unfortunately, I actually found my second set of abstracts to be disappointing as well but for different reasons.  This exercise made me realize that I still have a lot to learn about the do's and don'ts of watercolors so I went back to books and videos.  I suppose this was actually the point of this experimentation so I know I made some headway but the sense of disappointment was prevailing.

I chose to paint an autumn tree for this next exercise.  For this one, I used a wet-on-dry technique, however, once I had one layer down on the paper, some of this turned out to be wet-on-wet.  This one came out well and I definitely understand the things I did wrong in this one.  The palette I chose for this simple painting was pretty good but I could have been better at shading.  A really big problem I am having is that I'm doing things too symmetrical, too stiffly, too confined.  Also, I don't know what went wrong with trying to paint the leaves on the ground but I'm not too happy with how that turned out.  Hmmm...  maybe the problem isn't necessarily the leaves but the lack of ground under those leaves?  And again, the fallen leaves are too stiff and too symmetrical.  

Overall, however, this one turned out well enough to inspire the kids to give it a try themselves...

This one, below, turned out to be very disappointing to me.  My plan was to have hills fading into the background but, once again, my colors for these hills were far too saturated, too intense.  These hills are so saturated that the blue hill in the middle looks like over-saturated water and that was definitely not my intention.  I should have used more transparency which means I needed to be more precise in color placement and I needed to wait longer between layers.  Not only did I need more transparency but I also needed to knock down the saturation quite a bit.  These were two major mistakes that I feel ruin this painting.  Although the sky turned out fairly well if I don't nit-pick, it probably would have turned out better if I had a good quality larger round tip watercolor brush rather than the smaller, cheap, stiffer, flat brushes I had been using (remember, I challenged myself to use the kids' brushes).  

The trees in the foreground turned out well though and so did the sky.  The sky was done first with a wet-on-wet technique (wet watercolor on previously wetted paper).  The rest was done wet-on-dry (wet watercolor on dry paper).  

The watercolors I am using are decent watercolors.  I used the student grade of Windsor and Newton watercolors.  Once I get a handle on how to effectively use watercolors, I might invest in a set of tubes of their professional grade watercolors.  I'll also forego my half pans and use full pans instead.  The half pans work okay for very small brushes but not so well for larger brushes.  Using half pans, I found I needed to use a small brush for moving the paint to the palette and then a larger brush for painting.  This was a bit frustrating and it killed my flow.

The brushes I used were cheapo brushes and that was noticeable.  I had great difficulty controlling the paint and my set of brushes didn't go large enough for some of these exercises.  Most of these brushes, particularly the larger brushes, were too stiff for watercolors.  I didn't have enough of a selection in size as well as in brush shapes.  I do have a far better set of brushes to use but I chose to use the brushes that came with the kids' art sets instead.  After this little exercise in watercolors, I've decided that perhaps I should upgrade the kids' brushes.

Trying to use the kids' kit brushes reminded me of how wrong it is to start any new hobby or interest using cheap, junky tools.  If you want to skate but purchase cheap, lousy skates, you will be frustrated and quit.  If you want to get started in backyard astronomy but purchase a cheap, piece-of-junk beginner kit, you will get frustrated and quit.  If you want to start a woodworking hobby but by cheap, imprecise tools, you will get frustrated and quit.  If you want to get started in model railroading but purchase a cheap set that doesn't run well, you will get frustrated and quit.  The same holds true for art.  What I should add to this, however, is that if you understand the hard limits as the few strengths of these new tools, then you can often work around the hard limits of the cheap tools and produce something worthwhile.  This is almost impossible to do as a beginner though and it will always induce frustration at any level of experience.

I used two different papers for these watercolor paintings.  One was a mixed media heavyweight paper and the other was a watercolor heavyweight paper.  Honestly, with the brushes I was using, I couldn't notice much of a difference between the two types of papers as far as laying down paint goes.  What was noticeable was, since the watercolor paper was heavier, it took far longer to dry.  

The one problem I had with both papers but especially the heavier and more textured watercolor paper is that the masking tape stuck to the paper too well and peeled apart some of the surface of the paper.  That shouldn't happen and I need to figure out how to avoid that in the future.  I was using tape meant for this purpose yet it still ruined the surface of one of the paintings.  At the moment, I don't know if I need to find a better tape or if I did something wrong in using this tape.

I'd like to do each of these exercises again before moving into some slightly more complicated paintings.  I am confident that I can do better.  In my personal opinion, I like watercolors as a coloring medium for pencil sketches and I have a feeling my exercises in color watercolor sketches will go very well after working through a number of these types of watercolor painting exercises that I did above.