Ink-And-Watercolor Tips

[loogie]

Got my Aquarius II paper and new paints yesterday (finally! it took them like 9 days). The AqII is pretty much everything I hoped it would be. It's much smoother than cold press and so I can use even my finest dip pens on it (they just scratched the cold press all to hell). It's also a LOT thinner and absorbs liquid differently, so everything takes longer to dry and lifting works a lot better. Longer to dry may sound like a negative, but it allows very smooth washes for both land and sea.

Unfortunately ink also takes longer to dry and I was impatient so I had a bit of ink runnage in my little experiment. Wet in wet tends to fan a LOT so you have to be careful. But color pulls (think Gimp/PS smudge tool) extrenely well.

On buckling: supppsedly you can paint on AqII without stretching. I suppose you could say this but it does wave up a bit. I'm prpbably going to tape it down in the future, but not the massive tape job one needs for stretching; just something to keep the edges down since edge curlung is the most annoying part of the slight waving the paper does.

The paints are awesome. I got Daniel Smith PrimaTek in Serpentine and Transparent Yellow Ochre and they are both extremely close to the website's swatches and look great on the paper.

I'll probably scan last night's experiment tonight, but no judging lol ... it was total "let's see what happens if I do this..." so it looks like crap.


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Cold press generally is what i prefer for watercolour, but when inking it'd best to get the smoothest paper you can find.. different brands differ as well... so don't feel it's enitrely a price or "type" thing... I doubt you'd be able to paint without buckling without streching it, unless it's prestretched, or a heavy enough (300+) paper that it just can't buckle due to the strength of the thickness... if you don't like buckling, the only 100% fix is stretching its just annoying to set up.. i hate the glue tape, any i've yet to work out an easier way to do it up...

That sounds like a much better paper overall anyways... we found that the cheaper stuff either never actually goes into the paper, usually when there's not enough rag in the mix... or it'll soak in almost instantly, without getting the correct mixing effect...

As for longer drying times.. thats always true.. watercolour is pretty much never a one sitting per painting experience... you do layer upon layer and wait for it to dry.. fanning can be a bad thing and get "backruns" were if you add new water to a slightly damp part of the paper you'll get odd blossoms.. something you can use for texture.. but most of the time its an unwanted effect... thats why its generally best to do sections of the painting that do not touch, then letting them dry before doing anything even remotely adjacent... thats why a hairdryer also helps...

[Gidde]

@ Lyandra: Please do, and the one you posted looks cool! I don't feel usurped at all, more info is always better!

@ loogie: what a wealth of information! And yeah, the whole selling point of the aquarius is that it's part cotton part syntheric so supposedly it doesn't need stretching. My experiment was on an 8.5x11 section that i cut (it only comes in full sheets) and it warped about as much as I'd expect my 140# cold press to warp at that size, which isn't much. for 80# paper that's not bad


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[loogie]

for 80lb? that sounds pretty great!
I've got a Curry's Art supply here in London, Ontario and find them to carry the biggest variety of art supplies, while still having pretty good prices... even more then the mom and pops... they also have a few nicer brushes that are full kolinski sable (not great stuff, but you still notice a difference) for fairly cheap.. they're W&N but made for curry's, when you stick to the smaller sizes they're only round $10-$20... i bought a size 6 round for like $30, any higher then that and they go up in price... i want to get one good expensive brush, a big round at some point... but i'm not in a huge hurry, figure it'll be a bday or xmas gift or something one day... I'm working on a barn painting right now that's looking good... i haven't tried map painting, i'm still not secure in creating my own pictures, so i'm still in a taking a photo, sketching it, and transfering it to the paper with graphite paper and a stylus.

[Gidde]

Ha! I'm in the opposite boat. i can doodle maps in the stuff all day long but I'm terrified of trying a real painting. I have a great photo I took at the zoo that I'm going to try though Art stores here carry next to nothing unfortunately, so I'm stuck ordering mine from here out now that I know what kinds of stuff I'm looking for.

Side note: too busy tonight to scan, we'll try again tomorrow.


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[Chashio]

I bought my mom a set of watercolors last year, but she never has time to use them. =\

I paint with acrylics. The deeper colors are easier because they dry to a darker shade. Watercolors dry light.

Looking forward to what you post!

[loogie]

acrylics are for wussies! (smart people)

watercolours are indeed generally lighter, and generally thought to be a bit harder to use, mainy due to the ammount of prep and planning that you must do before you can start... there is no going back with a watercolour, where as most of the other paints can at the very least be painted over (or scraped off with oils)... it many instances it's great for creating landscapes and other large wash painting styles since watercolours blend and mix when painting large areas unlike most other mediums. In many cases watercolour comes down to letting the colours mix on the paper, and then dealing with the results... there is a large portion of "see what it does" that comes with watercolour, and much of someones experience boils down to mastering those qualities.

my father's favourite medium was watercolour, and he taught me when i was younger, which is where i'd like to think some of my skill comes from (it surprizes even me)... i've neglected to try other mediums cause i like the looks of watercolour the best, but also i'd be scared of switching due to it being easier.

it's always worth a shot trying it out, it's no less painting then acrylics... the only think is that its usually a bit more then just "buying some watercolours from walmart"... to get the real feel for how watercolour behaves, you need to get a bit more expensive stuff... I'm sure many people have neglected watercolours because of bad experiences due to bad paper/paint/brushes... if your looking to try you hand at painting... watercolour is definitely the last i'd recommend

[loogie]

Ha! I'm in the opposite boat. i can doodle maps in the stuff all day long but I'm terrified of trying a real painting. I have a great photo I took at the zoo that I'm going to try though Art stores here carry next to nothing unfortunately, so I'm stuck ordering mine from here out now that I know what kinds of stuff I'm looking for.

Side note: too busy tonight to scan, we'll try again tomorrow.


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yeah, actually you may find it's a bit easier then you think.. for the art class i took we started with basically tracing paintings... basically, you'd need 3 things... the original image full colour... these images can be large or smaller... larger is always better, but it's mainly for colouring purposes... the next is a black and white of your picture of the same size your trying to paint... this is pretty easy, ususally you can just get it photocopied b&w to the right size, I've done a lot of to-scale photocopies when i went to school for drafting stuff, but it's fairly easy to get in a ballpark... lastly, you need graphite paper (GRAPHITE. NOT CARBON.. the difference is carbon cannot be erased, graphite is the same as a pencil... technically you can scribble a lot of a soft-lead pencil on the back of your black and white for the same effect)... so, basically you tape your b&w to your paper, behind it put the graphite sheet graphite size down.. make sure its secured, you don't want you image moving as you draw... use a pencil, pen, any pointy utensile to trace the lines of your painting.. i use a stylus, which is a tool made specifically for that, it's nice cause it doesn't leave ink, pencil, or excessively scratch the paper as you go.. its just a really thin metal piece with a small ballpoint-sized ball on the end... you trace your picture (quite detailed) try not to lean on the paper or touch it as much as you can... you can erase it afterwards, but its difficult... i tend to under-trace, you need to get all your painting down... after your done, you can remove the b&w and paper... i tend to draw darkly on the paper, so to soften up the pencil a bit i use a gummy eraser and roll it around like a snake, it pics up most of the image.. not TOO much, but enough so it's a light pencil mark... from there you can paint.. use the colour image as your colour work, and you b&w to get an idea of shadows... it save us painters from having to be able to draw first... (it's always useful to be able to draw, but this way you can get by)

[Chashio]

acrylics are for wussies! (smart people)

hahaha! =D Yes to the first. The second, meh. I think it takes much more brains to paint in wc. ... This is certainly as close to watercolors as I get. Transparent acrylics on cold-press watercolor paper. The image quality, um, for some reason I decided to save it at actual size and 72ppi (see what I mean about the intelligence? =P Probably just me.) (sorry to usurp)

Edit: Actually, to add a bit of watercoloring advice and thus save myself from a completely rude usurp If you don't want to bother penciling in the shapes, paint the foreground first and work your way into the distance.

[Gidde]

No usurpage there, beautiful pic!

No scanning tonight either, gotta get the voting up for the lite challenge and head to bed. I promise I will upload something tomorrow!

[loogie]

yeah that looks great!

with watercolours the foreground to background is a bit of a gamble.. depending on your foreground entities... if their dark, you'd probably be ok, if their light, it gets tricky to paint around them sometimes, if the background is dark... your really screwed either way, and your prettymuch always need to be careful woo! come watercolour everybody!