Watercolor NEWBIE..please help

Hi,

I'm interested in exploring watercolor painting. My current dealings with the arts is mostly in music, poetry, and verse. My main drive to get into watercolor painting right now is I want to paint a picture for my best friend for Xmas..we both love the children's book The Little Prince and I want to paint one of the pictures and frame it for her. I know this may not be the BEST reason for someone to start exploring an artform, but I see it as a stepping stone and motivation to furthur express myself.

What I'm asking is that anyone help me get started. Whether it be advice, tips, how to go about getting supplies, what to user, the best way to start learning..it will all be appreciated.

Please email any responses, cc: them to the group if you feel the need to do so.

Thank you,

It usually takes destroying a half-dozen attempts to get one to turn out, and that by many professionals. The imidiacy and spontaneousness of watercolors demands control and proficiency.

My recommendation is to mess around watercolor as washes of color that fill drawings or sketches. Get a sketchbook, and just begin sketching objects in any room...of anybody, any thing. Use a BIC ball point black medium pen...use charcoal pencils, use sepia colored pencils...whatever- for drawing. Then use watercolor loosely and in washes of color...hhmmm...staining the drawings with color.

To get that sense of spontaneousness, don't labor over the drawings. Do them as quick studies...gestures..sketches. Then fill with color, and you can always go back into the colored drawing to beef 'em back up with more drawing tools. peace, Larry Seiler artist's site- http://cwinc.net/larryseiler WetCanvas Artists page- (shorter and quicker loading) http://www.wetcanvas.com/Gallery/S/Larry_Seiler/ index.html 'The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable man persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.' George Bernard Shaw

Hi Tony,

You migh consider an Oriental approach to watercolor, Sumi-e or Chinese Brush Painting. This type of painting attempts to capture the spirit rather than the literal subject. Many watercolorists are drawn to this type of painting because of the philopsophy, the simple elegance and because the Orientals have always been considered 'Masters of the Brush'. Please visit the 'Sumi-e Society Midwest' Web site. http://home.earthlink.net/~drasan There is a lot of information on this type of painting along with books, supplies, teachers, techniques, philosophy,a gallery, etc. Many of the members including myself are also watercolorists.

In the spirit of the brush,

Sande Nitti Silver Dragon Studio http://www.silverdragonstudio.com

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Good luck!

There are just 3 or 4 basic techniques in watercolor. The 'wash' is thinned out paint brushed smoothly over the paper. The 'dry brush' is removing some of that thinned out paint from the brush and dragging the brush over the surface for texture. For 'line' you use the edge, point or corner of the brush to draw. Finally, 'wet-into-wet' painting is dampening the paper first, then dropping or painting color into the wet surface so the color spreads and has soft edges. You can do all these with two brushes, a 3/4' flat watercolor brush and a #6 or 8 pointed round brush. If you want to learn color mixing, start with six colors (a warm yellow and a lemony yellow, a cool blue and warm blue and a cool, bluish red and a warm orangey red. Mix the warm yellow and warm red for orange; mix the cool yellow and cool blue for green; mix the warm blue and cool red for violet. Mix different combination of these for brown and black. The paint should flow without coming off the brush in chunks and there should be enough paint in the mixture that it doesn't have to be brushed over several times. This is the five-minute course. Aside from this, it takes lots of painting to paint really good watercolors. Good luck!

Thanks to everyone! I'm sure this all will be a big help.

-Tony .-._.-._.-._.-._.-._.-._.-._.-._.-._.-._.-._.-._.-._.- ._.-._.-._.-._.-. Anthony J. Biacco Network Administrator/Engineer

'Dream as if you'll live forever, live as if you'll die today' http://cygnus.ncohafmuta.com http://www.intergrafix.net .-._.-._.-._.-._.-._.-._.-._.-._.-._.-._.-._.-._.-._.- ._.-._.-._.-._.-.

.-._.-._.-._.-._.-._.-._.-._.-._.-._.-._.-._.-._.-._.- ._.-._.-._.-._.-. Anthony J. Biacco Network Administrator/Engineer

'Dream as if you'll live forever, live as if you'll die today' http://cygnus.ncohafmuta.com http://www.intergrafix.net

The best advice I could give you is start with light washes (pale colors and lots of water) and build your way up to darker colors and more detail.. painting is like sculpting, you build it one block at a time; except for your shades of color are what defines the shape.. Start out just painting simple shapes like circle and squares.. pick a light source and go for it..

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