Shiny monsters with watercolor?

MOO

Just wondering. What are some tips for making things shiny with watercolor ? Example: A shiny blue underwater monster? Mine didn't look too shiny

Lynn Larson

A white Prismacolor pencil and a white Jellyroll pen Use the Jellyroll for hard highlights and the pencil for softer shine

MOO

@lynn-larson Thanks! I'll try it.

Eric Castleman

Try some white gauche ( I think that is how it is spelled).

smceccarelli

Shiny things have hard white highlights. If you observe any shiny object, you will easily see how there are sharp transitions between color and bright white at specific spots. The position and shape of the highlight is very important and depends on the position of the light and the shape of the object (hence needs to be consistent with the overall lighting of your scene), but you can wing the shape as long as the highlights are in the right position.
So you can use masking fluid on the highlights and keep them masked until the very end, or use white gouache or any other opaque white medium at the end.

Andyg

An interesting thing to look at might be the paint work on cars. Very shiny, but don’t use the white highlight thing. A few months ago I started having to paint and colour-draw cars and someone pointed out to me. The paint doesn’t so much reflect like chrome, but it’s almost an interaction of shadow reflection with lighter and darker areas to create form.
As a caveat, the darker the paintwork, the more colour reflective the surface. So bright colours reflect more like a mirror, but the days are still more sillouhettes.

MOO

@eric-castleman Thanks. I think I might have soem gouache in my paints. Haven't used them yet.

MOO

@smceccarelli Thank you, Simona!

MOO

@andyg Thanks. I'll look up shiny cars and see what you mean

It takes time, and even the texture of good water color paper van make objects look like they 'glow'. There's also a great book called "How to render" by Scott Robertson

MOO

@ben-migliore Thanks Ben!

pepper.imps

There's an iridescent medium that golden makes, you can mix it into your watercolor or just brush it on top and it makes everything nice and shiny. There are some daniel smith paints that are iridescent too but the medium gives you more range imo

Lee White

All good suggestions. Note: If an object is underwater, it will not have hard highlights and they wont be white. Everything underwater takes on the hue of water and is a little blurry in detail. Wet things coming out of the water get hard highlights. That said, here's a pretty good example of a shiny surface object in watercolor. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dcmfRooP6dg

MOO

@lee-white Wow! Cool pictures! Thanks.