Water color

[Aliikaiokai]

I drew the best drawing I ever have. It was a different style than what I normally do. It was perfect. So then I reached the hard part, painting it. As I took the first stroke it looked wonderful. Then the second, and it all went down hill from there. I just ruined something ive been working at for months. so I ask all of you. How do I paint with water Colour? Any thing helps, especially videos. Even a video of you doing it would be amazing. But please, I don't want this to happen again.

[Jet]

Hrrmm....I personally stay away from water colors and paints. Just my preference, but whenever I get a hold of those it turns out an explosion of unorganized color. I can tell you however that, like any art, this will happen. I do it from time to time, having to scrap hours of hard work to start again. It takes time, patience, and practice to not mess up. But I am sure if you keep at it, you'll be able to shell out something awesome without a care in the world.


I don't know any tutorials and such in particular, but I am sure you could find some on Youtube. Maybe you could roughly draw out your picture on normal paper first so you know where the colors go for sure. I'm not sure if that will help or not because I don't mess with water colors. Good luck though and don't give up.

[Brunn]

I would recommend seeing if you can take a watercolor course somewhere. A lot of community centers offer art classes. If that fails, look for videos on youtube, I'm sure they have tons. Water color takes a lot of time and practice to work with as they behave very, very differently and unpredictably to everything else. The best thing you can do is to sit down and do a bunch of quick doodles and sketches and just play with the watercolors. See what different effects you can get with different strokes and wetness, adding water first and then paint, vice versa. It's a weird medium to work with!

Also, never buy the cheap watercolors! If you're serious about working with this medium, at least get the 'middle of the road' cost paints. The cheap ones don't blend well at all and colors are bland at best, making it hard to mix colors. They tend to get muddy, and good watercolors you can lift right off of good quality paper with water. It's pretty neat! Anyway, the good quality paints work so much better and really do save a lot of frustration when painting with them, so they're worth it!

EDIT: Here's an example from my old DA account of what I mean by 'play' with them http://browse.deviantart.com/?qh=&section=&q=dinosaur+roar+watercolor#/d2g66rz We did this in a design class, jsut had a play day; did a quick little doodle, then painted it up. It also illustrates why I don't recommend the cheapo paints, they're a pain to work with and the pigment in them is terribad! Blendable, but they tend to muddy quickly. 

~~Brunn~~

[Old Rabbit]

I would suggest making a photo copy of your drawing for practice next
time. That way you don't loose your nice drawing. 

If you don't have a copier, most libraries have them. Or even some supermarkets.

[Odessa_x]

Well, first I'd say that you may not have been using watercolor paper with an appropriate thickness to it, 120 lbs+. If you were, great, that's the first step. Like some one else said, you might want to enroll in a watercolor class, which will help. Learning watercolor is not instantaneous; it's a very unique medium. Play around with it some days, and I remind you that it's relatively quick painting, the planning is most of the work, and the paining is meant to be done simply and quickly with minimal messing around. Have fun, I sure do.

[Kobuk]

Closed as this is past the 6 month gravedig limit.