Watercoloring Options
July 28, 2008
5:00 pm
maria
Painting, Techniques and Mediums
- Dry palettes are the most universally known of the your watercolor options. Most of us remember grabbing a dry palette in grade school and enjoying hours of fun. You just add a few drops of water to the dry color and dab it onto a mixing palette. Use straight from the container or dilute the color.
- Watercolor tubes are another common watercolor paint. You dab a little of the creamy paint from the tube onto your palette and start adding some water to dilute the concentrated hues. You can also mix your own colors.
- Liquid watercolors come in bottles usually with a dropper as part of the bottles top. Liquid watercolors are often the most brilliant. You’ll simply squeeze a drop or two of color onto your palette and dilute with water until you are happy with the hue. You can also use the liquid undiluted. Just dip your brush tip into the color and begin to use on your image. Work from the outer part of the image into the center. By doing this you will see that you are shading the image with little hassle since by the time you are coloring the center, the color has become diluted or lighter as the water flows to the brush tip.
- Water-based markers work as watercolors. All you need to do is take an old CD (the kind you keep getting in the mail and throw away) and apply color from the marker directly onto the CD (or other palette). You pick up the color from the CD with your waterbrush and color to your heart’s content. You can do the same thing with any water-based (non-permanent inkpads or reinkers) inkpads. Pick up some color by lightly touching the waterbrush tip to the inkpad and bringing the color to a palette. A little color goes a long way. It’s best to work or color a small area at a time. Go lighter than you think you need because you can always add more color and watercolors tend to dry a bit darker in hue than what is seen when wet.
- Nicholson’s Peerless Water Colors are one of the prettiest transparent watercolors. Peerless was originally designed for use in coloring black and white photographs, but artists and crafters soon began using the watercolors for much more including paper and rubberstamping designs. The watercolor paint is on a thin sheet of paper. All you do is take the wet tip of the waterbrush and stroke it over the watercolor sheet. Bring the color to a palette and wipe the excess color off onto the palette. Depending on the degree of color you want you’ll either add more color off the Peerless sheet or add more water to the color already on your palette. Test the color on a scrap piece of paper and adjust until the color is to your liking. Then you’ll start coloring your design. To clean the brush all you need to do is squeeze the handle over a paper towel and wipe the tip until no more
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SherryB :
Date: August 20, 2008 @ 11:38 am
You missed a watercolor option - water color Pencils - you can vary the depth and intensity when you lay down the colors, then wash with water to blend.
Moon :
Date: August 20, 2008 @ 12:16 pm
You missed watercolor crayons too. These can be easily blended and used on a variety of substrates. Also good to know is that you can wet your brush with white paint or gesso and blend that way too.