Watercolor tips

Instructions

Ok so I was going to make this the long awaited watercolor tutorial but then I forgot to take progress pics...... ik I’m a genius.... Here are some watercolor tips until I can get a real tutorial out: DISCLAIMER: listen to me at ur own risk lol -I hate to say it, but your materials DO matter... a little.... you don’t have to spend your life savings, but you do have to spend about $20-$30...There’s a small starter set of watercolors from Winsor and Newton on Amazon for like $12 and it’s actually good quality... (psst... it was my first watercolor set, I use the same line of watercolor now, just a palette with more colors!) -use watercolor paper. Watercolor paper must be at least 140lbs / 300 grams, and actually ment to absorb watercolors. Even if it’s a quality art paper, papers that don’t have enough grain aren’t going to absorb the watercolor (it’ll prob just rub off tbh). -work light to dark. You can paint watercolor in sections (which is actually what I did here), but really you should try putting light tones down first, then layering them to get darker colors. Since the dog was mostly black anyways I simply put 2(ish) really thick layers of black down for the darker fur... -the color goes where the water goes (unless u just have really weird watercolors, idk man), so use that to your advantage. You can fill in a large area w/ water and drop bits of color in to make even gradients from color to the natural white of the paper. You can even layer this, which comes in handy for portraiture and stuff... -TEST, TEST, TEST. You might see below the dogs head how there’s a gradient of the three colors I used for the dog w/white on top of the black part. That’s me testing to see how the white watercolor layers on top of black (and yes, it’s possible to go dark to light with watercolors, but I wouldn’t mess with that much if you’re just beginning. Even so, you’d really only ever go dark to light for small highlights) -you can layer colored pencils on top to add in details, I didn’t do that here since it really isn’t that intricate of a painting, but you can. Just don’t use crayola/crazy art/artist loft/any of their cousins. Those brands r not pigmented enough to layer properly on top..... srry, not trying to throw shade on our OG brands, but they just aren’t gonna work all that well.... -be. Patient. Watercolor done in layers is gonna look rlly rlly bad at first/kinda dull. Don’t freak out about it and just continue to slowly work on defining shapes. -don’t start with portraits. I’m srry honey, but that’s tough one for EVERYONE to do.... even professional artist who’ve gone to art school and such often mess up and struggle with it. It is definitely not the place to start.... i do portraits now and then, and let me tell you this: they’re difficult, stressful, and not the first thing you want to do in watercolors. You need to learn the fundamentals first. I hope this helped..... ask me questions in the comments if you actually read this far :0 also srry if this didn’t help because they’re mostly random/obvious tips...