First stab at watercolor... (Feedback and Critiques, please!)
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Been a bit! Life has taken a crazy turn recently, and my time to art has diminished a bit, but not completely gone away. I went through @Lee-White 's Loosening Up in Watercolor class, and I really enjoyed it. Watercolor is a medium that I've always wanted to tackle, but never had the guts... Well, Lee gave me the guts. I'm pretty happy with how this piece came out, but I'm sure it could be better. I'd love to get any feedback or crits you guys might have so my next one can be better
Thanks!
Aaron -
Interesting! This has a very unique look to it, almost like it's not even watercolor! It looks very grainy and the paint is applied on very thickly it seems. It looks really cool, but watercolor really shows its best potential when you paint wetter, and let the water work its magic
The water can be hard to control and unpredictable, which is where a lot of people say watercolors are so hard. However, when you "loosen up" and reliquish the control, the water effects almost always end up looking fabulous so in a way it doesn't matter that you have less control. Don't be afraid to use more water! But great first start on watercolors, it is a very good painting objectively it's just that I might have guessed it was made with acrylics or gouache rather than watercolor! Another tip to help you use more water can be to use dry watercolor instead of tubes. The tube paint you can use as is, and sometimes it's tempting to do so, whereas the dry one you have no choice but to dilute it to use, and that can help you get in the habit of using more water in your mixes -
Not bad for a first try on your own. Even though watercolor is very unforgiving, you can still keep working on this. I think a darker foreground would help ground those trees a little bit.
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@NessIllustration Totally understand where you're coming from on that one. I think my scan is doing me some disservice here, as now that I'm looking at it again it does look at lot more saturated than it actually is IRL. That's my fault on the color correction, though lol. BUT, you're still right. I need to get wetter. There was a lot of lifting and spray bottle work done on that one, as well as a wet canvas wash to start (which was REALLY fun lol) but a lot of the later work was heavy paint, light water. I've got a massive set of paints from Windsor Newton in the cubes, but I really wanted to work with my tube paints... maybe my next piece I'll use the cubes and see if that doesn't help
Thank you for your feedback as always! It's always super insightful and helpful!@burvantill True story. I was working on a smaller canvas and didn't quite get the fade that I wanted in my wash. I'll have to work on that next time
Thank you for the feedback!
