How to: water colors

Your are cracklin me up here - you posted while I was editing my post.

mastering w/c is mastering draftsmanship. Try all paper including bond paper, (wrinkled as well) everyone has a paper,cold pressed or hot,rough or smooth. Read Watercolor Fares Forth 'hara Look at books on various watercolor artist. Try to use color from 20th century masters..Klee, Matisse,Bonnard the triumvirate of interesting colorists. Try various amounts of water with pigment,see Marin he gives simple instructions ..similar to this. I believe in studying the formal possibilities and then developing subject matter.Many just copy and follow the direction of the big watercolor competions.Most transparent only exhibitions eliminate experimental work because they limit the drawing to pencil work.The British were using various drawing implements in the 18th century..quill,reed pen,metal points. Canneletto would have been eliminated under ther rules.

Sodabred, how cool!!! Tomorrow I go after the w/c's. Thanks so much for the inspiration!

Sodabred, great name, glad to meet you here. Interesting post on watercolor history, re Canaletto...

Experimentation! I find that combining water color and acrylic can be quite interesting. lol.

watercolors
bluxx, taking your comment seriously, which medium do you (should one) apply first?

Im hooked on these Sennelier WCs . I like their fine granularity and their pigmentation strength. I personally have never found acrylic (as a water medium) satisfying because its too grainy for me. Is there a really finely ground acrylic out there?

My delving in to egg tempera has made me realize 2 things

TUPPERWARE IS ACTUALLY TOO AVANT GARDE FOR GENERAL USE BY ANYONE OTHER THAN ARTISTS WHO WISH TO PRESERVE BIG BATCHES OF TEMPERA

I NEED TO RAISE SOME MORE CHICKENS CUZ IM GOIN THROUGH EGGS LIKE SHERMAN THROUGH GEORGIA

bless you Farmerman; "Sherman through Georgia"!

The famerman said a really cool artist yolk.

I am just tickled that the tupperware in my cabinet is Avant-Garde; putting away left overs now has new significance for me!

Hmmm...Watercolor. Being that watercolor is less likely to stick to the acrylic...well, thats been my experience. Paint pens work well on top of Acrylic.

People worry toooo much about the 'correct' way to use watercolour - i like to use oil pastel marks as a wax resist, then slosh water colour over, use pen, chinagraph pencil ...... anything that makes the image work.

Jeanne Dobie wrote a great book on colour that relates to watercolour - Making Color Sing - well worth studying.

Excellent advice vivien. Ive found that most of my secret watercolor practices were total accidents and Ive ALWAYS written them down in a w/c journal. Its like my own personal necromancibus satanis.
Ive found that the tricks you mentioned to develop kakamamy resists. I even use paint sticks for furniture ding repair. These are like a dark pallette of thick crayolas. Another trick in doing extreme real paintings is to develop the sketches in complementary colors so that when I begin the infilling with washes, there is a complementary color on the outline of the subject that makes it stand out.
Ive been doing some very wet watercolors of "street people" from Philadelphia. I take photos then I project the photo to hasten my drawing time and adjust the importance of the subject with its entourage. I just completed one that Im going to enter in the AWS show, its of a street man pushing his shopping cart full of boxes and one big umbrella. I hope the jury is kind.

hi farmerman - have you got a website? would love to see some of your work. (you can see mine on my website) It sounds interesting.

what do you paint? landscapes?

I also like to use normal pastels (chalky type) on top of watercolour sometimes - just a bit to intesify things.

watercolors can be a great medium. I have received invites to show at some watercolor competitions.I put them in the wastebasket. They specify that there is to be no embossment ,no ink, no this,no that.Just reactionary ,retrograde approaches to the medium. You may use pencil. As a start ,but it must be used in subordination to transparent watercolor. Actually, this is not a solid way to paint.Some people did this in other mediums as well . But, good line quality should be flowing ,and it works better if you add it after you have divided the support by areas.Inspiration for other approaches, Pollocks wtcrs. Miro's wtclrs.He had a very important period in waterclor and they laid the foundation for some major canvases.Want to do something for watercolor. Don't send to the California painting competitions etc. that emphasize technique.Years ago the Washington Waterclor Club and the Birmingham Ala. Museum held exhibitions and they included new experimental works.The fun of art is in breaking rules. Yes , lads and lassies rules are to be broken. That is why we do it.

full agreement there sodabred. the Phila w/c club shows are among the most anal about subordinate media. however,in the recent past, I snuck a few past the jurors.

no Vivien i dont yet have a personal webpage. When i finally get the time to do so I hope Ill be interested in doing one.

wc
I also agree wholeheartedly, Sodabred. When I see "catalogs" of the winnners of such WC competitions, I see, with rare exception, nothing but technically competent but soul-less works. They do have a certain superficial (and quickly boring) aesthetic appeal--at the level of "pretty". But they are mostly just sweet pictures, not living images with powerful personalities. No evidence of incautious experimentation or expressiveness--too anal (thanks FM).

jlnobody, farmerman and sodabread

I totally agree with you. Luckily i haven't come across any predjudice when showing work - but i hear a lot of people discussing 'pure' watercolour and insisting that it shouldn't be mixed with gouache or other media - as though this is some 'superior' rather than inadequate method

They are not creating paintings but insipid pictures, safe, predictable and totally uninspiring.

wcs
Vivien