Home › Forums › Explore Media › Watercolor › The Learning Zone › Watercolor paints with very little water?
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January 10, 2018 at 11:21 pm #449274
Hi, I am a new artist. My first painting was done with watercolor tubes. I found myself not using a whole lot of water. The result didn’t look like a typical watercolor; I was able to layer the watercolors well.
What would you call doing art with watercolors (in tubes) without adding much water? I know something called gouache exists, but I just have plain ol’ watercolors and I found using very little water worked OK.
What are the considerations here? Thanks so much!
mercfredis
January 10, 2018 at 11:32 pm #543121It depends on what you are painting and how you want to portray it. Very normal for botanical artists (one example) to paint dry brush throughout. But for things like the sky, faraway mountains, water, etc. if you do it with just dry brush, it’s likely that colors get muddled and uneven for a large surface with dry brush and many layers.
January 10, 2018 at 11:36 pm #543125Yeah this is it, I think I attached it…Funny you said botanical cuz yes it is a poinsettia bloom.
January 11, 2018 at 12:25 am #543122Wow, your watercolor looks like gouache! Painting so thickly like this with watercolor paint could quickly become very expensive since watercolor tubes are so small.
If you want to paint opaquely, use layering, and not have to use up so much paint, I would recommend gouache. Other options are casein, acrylic gouache, or matte acrylics. I think that you might really like gouache in particular and do well with it! Some botanical artists and illustrators use gouache and produce beautiful works with it.
I love mixed media!
January 11, 2018 at 1:30 am #543112You can ease into gouache gradually. Get a tube of white gouache (I like the Da Vinci brand). You can mix it with your watercolors to make lighter shades, and you can use it for white instead of leaving the white of the paper (which looks a little unnatural when you are painting opaquely). You can phase in other gouache colors as your watercolors get used up.
Beware of using thick layers of watercolor or gouache. It gets brittle and can crack.
C&C is welcome.
RichardJanuary 11, 2018 at 8:35 pm #543117Arne Westerman was a successful watercolor artist who paints very thickly.
https://www.arnewesterman.com/previously/watercolor.php
If you can afford it, there’s no reason why you can’t use that style.
Jan
January 11, 2018 at 10:54 pm #543124I learned quite a lesson many years ago. I was in a water color class where we were all painting different subjects. One of my class mates, an older woman, was having trouble painting flowers. She had a thick painting style. A fellow classmate (not me) was gently cajoling her about her thickly painted flowers.
That is when the teacher broke in their conversation and said to the cajoling student “…You better watch it. If she gets a handle on her flowers she will be selling all her paintings and yours will be gathering dust…” We later learned our instructor, a landscape painter, spend most of the summer months making flower painting to sell. He later told us he was selling out all his flower paintings he did every year in the summer and that demand for them had out stripped his ability to make them.
Here is an example of what sells:
http://www.jeanhaines.com/gallery?g=11
Eliminate timidity. Failure is only experience to get us to the next level.
January 12, 2018 at 4:24 am #543116Sie stellen eine sehr seltsame Frage.
Natürlich können Sie Aquarellfarben aus der Tube mit einer
Spachtel auftragen, Sie können die Farben auch mit jeder
Menge Wasser verdünnen – darum der Name Wasserfarben!You ask a very strange question.
Of course, you can apply watercolor paints from the tube
with a spatula, you can also dilute the colors with plenty of
water – hence the name water colors!Ernst
Meine Seiten - My website
Malen ist nicht alles im Leben - aber ohne Malen ist alles nichts!
Painting is not everything in life - but without painting everything is nothing!January 13, 2018 at 2:20 am #543123I think you should do what you love but if you love thicker paint maybe your journey is taking you to another medium such as acrylic or gouache. The skies the limit. But since you have watercolors experiment try a poinsettia with more water, get into the feel of the medium its quite enjoyable. I’ve seen some beautiful florals done with watercolor that were either more opaque or more transparent. Your painting is beautiful.
January 14, 2018 at 1:06 am #543126Wow, thanks for all the feedback, guys. What is the technical difference between gouache and watercolor used without water?
I do think I want to try to work with watercolor with more water. I’ve been messing with other mediums too. I like oil pastels!
But yeah this painting will always have a special place in my heart, because it was my first and somehow, it turned out so well. I just wasn’t sure why water needed to be added to watercolor pigment. I might try it again, some day down the road. I think it was just beginner’s luck
January 14, 2018 at 6:41 am #543120Artists can push the boundaries of the rules, but there is already a medium that wants to be painted in thick layers.
I came to watercolors from acrylic painting. A tube of Winsor & Newton Professional acrylic paint in ultramarine blue sells for $7.79 for a 60 ml tube. Same color and brand in watercolor is $6.48 for a 5 ml tube. These are current sale prices, the WC tube is usually about $9.
Thats $0.13 per ml for acrylic and $1.29 per ml. for watercolor. Other brands, colors, sizes, and sales are different prices, but the outcome is the same. The same painting will cost significantly more when using watercolors in thick layers than if done in acrylic.
My watercolor paints crack in the palette when left to dry in thick layers. The cracking is likey worse on flexible paper. The paper sizing is not being wet enough to bond the thick layer of watercolor to the paper. Seems likely that thick watercolors could crumble and fall off the paper.
The plastic binder in acrylic holds the paint to the paper and keeps it from cracking.
In acrylic paints, you can apply the paint in thick layers without the disadvantages.January 14, 2018 at 8:45 pm #543127Yeah I have some acrylics, but I am afraid of how they dry so quickly! I feel like you have to be better than I am, because I need something I can work with over and over Is there anything I can do to mitigate that, or any other advice? Thanks for the help!
January 14, 2018 at 9:25 pm #543115I don’t want to talk you out of watercolours, but you can keep acrylics wet by misting with a spay bottle or by using a Sta-Wet palette that has a big spongy thing underneath a disposable palette sheet.
Noelle
January 14, 2018 at 11:01 pm #543113These are both Da Vinci Ultramarine Blue applied straight from the tube with a knife. I can’t tell any significant difference between the watercolor and the gouache.
C&C is welcome.
RichardJanuary 15, 2018 at 6:44 pm #543128Very interesting…thanks Richard! Maybe they have different drying properties? Who knows. I think I’m gonna give acrylic a go.
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