Amazingly light, airy watercolors cause an irresistible desire to take brushes and paints and create a masterpiece. But drawing with watercolors requires preparation - these paints are not as easy to work as it might seem at first glance. Knowledge of the law of color mixing, vision of tone, fluency in brushing and the technique of applying paint to paper are only initial knowledge, but airiness and transparency of work can only be achieved by experience.
Drawing with watercolors requires a careful selection of paper: density, relief, type, grain and sizing - it all matters. Inks are coated in different ways, absorbed and dried, depending on the type of paper.
The watercolor painting techniques are magical and peculiar: on wet and dry paper, washing off, filling, multilayer and mixed techniques, painting with a dry brush, ink or palette knife, using salt.
Painting on raw paper creates airiness, transparency, flowing from one color to another and is used to create landscapes. The paint is applied to a pre-moistened sheet of paper and, depending on the degree of humidity, spreads more or less on the sheet. The technique requires experience, mastery of the brush and constant self-control, because if the paint spreads in the wrong direction, it is almost impossible to fix the mistake.
Dry painting allows you to clearly control the spreading of paper, the shape of strokes and tone density. You can write with watercolors :
- dry brush on a dry sheet in one layer, achieving airiness;
- with a wet brush on a dry sheet with the application of one smear on the edge of the next wet, creating overflows.
Glaze or multi-layer painting creates rich colors, chiaroscuro, emphasizes the texture of objects. Watercolor painting in this technique is carried out layer by layer, the upper one is applied to the already dried out lower one, often the work takes place in several stages. The works performed in the technique of glazing, in terms of the density of strokes resemble the work of gouache or oil paints, so only experienced artists can give the picture transparency.
An interesting technique is working with salt - getting on a wet layer, it absorbs part of the paint, forming stains. But the sheet should not be too wet, otherwise the salt will dissolve. Large crystals form large stains, similar to stars or flowers, and small crystals create images of falling snow, foam, small inflorescences.
Fill - a watercolor painting technique in which a sheet of paper is covered with a layer of diluted paint. You can cover the surface with a wide brush or sponge. Fill may be:
- uniform, in one tone;
- gradation - the transition of one color from dark to light;
- multicolor - a smooth transition of several colors into each other.
The complexity of this technique is that the layers can be uneven, with clear boundaries, interspersed with ...
Improving this technique will greatly simplify work with large formats of paintings, with open landscapes, with spatial plots.
Mixing all the techniques will allow you to turn watercolor painting into a fascinating and exciting activity.
The result will be a watercolor masterpiece.