Your Custom Text Here
-Let's grab a Coffee and talk about Watercolor!
This is where I share my stories, my technique, my thoughts on art, and announcements. I am in production of making a weekly video for this. But as for now, they will be in written form. I hope you enjoy them and find them informative and helpful. Feel free to comment and ask me anything. Ask me what's your biggest struggle when you paint watercolor.
Have you ever been in a place where you done couple paintings, despite all the praise and admiration you've received, you are just not happy about them? Moreover, you are frustrated because you knew you can do better, at least you think you can. The painting in your mind looks much better than what you produced? I feel like I am in that stage right now. At first I thought I've lost my touch. But after looking back to my previous works, I realized that my works are getting better in quality. It's just that I'm entering another stage as an artist. I call this stage - The growing pain stage
The past Saturday was my wife's birthday. Being an artist gives me the privilege to express my feeling for her by painting her. I still remember painting her for the first time in oil back in 2004 when we were still dating. I never get tire of painting her. It gets easier since I am very familiar with the structure of her face and what makes her face. However I do find myself venture out to a new territory when it comes to painting a very familiar subject such as my wife. The confidence I have when painting her helps me to be a bit more bold and give her more character and paint her with less information.
The more I paint, the more I understand the importance of planning. I argue that's probably the main difference between a successful and an unsuccessful painting. When people ask me questions like: Why does my painting looking muddy? How do I paint a loose painting? Why does the painting never turns out the way I want? I can tell the lack of planning is the major contributor of these issues.
This week I am just going to share my new painting video. This video shows the process of how I paint a large scale landscape. One of the key is to focus on deliver the scale and the depth. What you want to do is to re-create this vast view that you get when you are on the top of a mountain. You simply can't see every detail in it nor do you need to. I hope you enjoy the video =)
There's a lot of "know how" in today's world. We are fortunate to be in a society that so much information are available for us! You can learn so much by just spending an hour on YouTube if you know where to look. And the reason for so many "how to" videos on the internet is because people want to get the result. When I am in a restaurant and just ate something tasty. I usually start wondering how did they cook it. Same thing as painting. When people see a beautiful painting, one of the first few question will usually be "how does he/she paint that?" It is important to learn how, the how is the action and process that can yield the result that you are looking for. But that's not the whole story. To ask and wonder about "why" is equal, if not more important than "how".
Whether you want to reproduce your painting, making prints, books or cards, or you simply want to keep a good image of your work, a properly taken photograph is imperative. However, I should mention that you don't need an over-the-top expansive set up. I took my photo right where I make my paintings, which is just a corner of a room. All you really need is a good camera on tri-pod, a good set of lighting and set them up properly.
Water is essential to watercolor. You loosen and dilute the paint by adding water to it. It is also water that makes watercolor transparent. The right paint and water ratio is directly related to the value and the opacity. It can be a bit tricky to get it right at first, but it will eventually become part of your instinct with enough practice and some observation. Unfortunately I can not help you with the practice part, but I can provide you some tips to help you along the way. Obviously, the dryer the mixture, the more intense the color. But there are some other things that can give you an idea how wet is your mixture...
The reason I am very determent to include the fundamental drawing in the course is because it is essential for producing a good painting. It is one thing that hinders many students to be able to focus on learning to paint with watercolor. Simply put, if you are struggling with fundamental knowledge of perspective, lighting, and surface material, you can't focus on painting watercolor! Many people are frustrated that they are not able to paint the subject they are passionate about. They don't know how to approach it, where do they start, what's the essential element to it and how to simplify it.