We all know that the artist's tools are important. But how we use them will either make or break what we are hoping to achieve. In watercolors, the brush is really important. We need a brush suitable to the technique and also built to carry enough moisture (water and paint) to and on the surface. Most of the problems new watercolorists suffer with is the amount of paint and moisture in the brush - either too much or too little. This results in too strong or too washed out color.
Too much means that you have used your brush to pick up too much pure pigment from the palette, too little color (washed out) means that you have left too much water in the brush and not picked up enough color - the problem lies with how you have set up your working palette and how you load the brush.
The following might help when you are getting started - have two areas where you work:
After you have prepared your Traditions paint with the Traditions watercolor medium, set up the following like this...
- # One: The palette where the prepared paint is laid out. If the fresh pigment is laid out in a 'well' (those little in-dented separations) on your watercolor palette, make sure the paint is diluted to a liquid form, not too much though. This is called a 'juicy mix', where the pigment color is strong and rich.
- # Two: Another surface where you can add water to make a more diluted version of the color for your different values as you need them (a wax palette or the mixing area on your watercolor palette works for this)
There will be two different areas to work from:
When you load your brush for watercolors, wet the brush and either shake out the excess water or remove some on a papertowel ....not so much that you leave the brush as dry as a bone, you want to leave the brush just slightly damp. Pass it across your fingers and feel the moisture content without there being a trail of wet. When you dip the point of the brush into the paint (palette # one) you should be able to dip the tip into wet paint. Most problems are here - the paint is not wet enough and you pick up straight pigment that may be harder to control. Wet paint is key while you are learning to handle the new media.
If you need to work with lighter values, create a small clean puddle of water on the wax palette #2 or in another clean well, pick up and add some of the juicy color to this and test the value on the test strip of watercolor paper. This will give you a more accurate 'read' on what value or intensity you are looking for.
When you are loading the brush with either 'rich juicy' color or any of the lighter values from either palette - load the brush to about a third of the way up the brush from the tip. This will allow you to take paint to the painting surface and you can then see what and how you are doing with controlling your color. |
