Home › Forums › Explore Media › Watercolor › The Learning Zone › Paint to water ratios… ????? anyone?
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April 25, 2012 at 9:14 am #989619
As someone starting out on the journey of watercolor, my biggest issue has been the paint to water ratio and adding color wet into wet.
Well the light bulb went off today. I viewed Sterling Edwards video on Artistnetworktv. He finally let me “see” what its all about. Truly a epiphany for me. NOW I can begin to understand.
He also does a fair amount of mixing grey with complements and as he says. ” greens are the most difficult color to deal with” and goes to show how to get vibrant greens with just three colors. Using the colors yellow, brown and blue he developed Spring Green, Earthy Green and Tropical green.
A really good video for those that don’t understand any of these subjects.
The video is titled Brushwork Techniques for Expressive Watercolor at
http://artistnetwork.tv and in my view its well worth the price of admission….
Bernie
If you can't stand the answer; do NOT ask the question
April 25, 2012 at 10:22 am #1160902Zbucvic has a range of paint to water ratios that he describes as Tea, Coffee, Milk, Cream and Butter.
Doug
We must leave our mark on this worldApril 25, 2012 at 12:03 pm #1160921I own many Sterling Edwards DVDs and have learned from all of them. I just saw that he has 2 new ones available for rent at artistsnetwork.tv. I’ll be renting those for sure.
I have had the privilege of taking several workshops with Sterling Edwards and he is a wonderful teacher…. in addition to being a thoroughly nice person.
I highly recommended his workshops if you are interested in a loose and easy semi-abstract way of painting landscapes and buildings.
He also has a lot of short free videos at the http://www.jerrysartarama website… as well as full DVDs for purchase at Jerrys.
And…. :)… he has several DVDs for purchase at the North Light online shop.
Susan
in beautiful North Carolina
Retired and loving every minute of it !!!
Time to play......April 25, 2012 at 12:04 pm #1160922Also… Arnold Lowery wrote a wonderful article about paint-to-water ratios that is somewhere on this site….
perhaps Yorky can point you to it’s location……. Doug??? do you know where it is ????
Susan
in beautiful North Carolina
Retired and loving every minute of it !!!
Time to play......April 25, 2012 at 12:21 pm #1160903April 25, 2012 at 1:23 pm #1160923Thanks Doug !!!!
Susan
in beautiful North Carolina
Retired and loving every minute of it !!!
Time to play......April 25, 2012 at 9:18 pm #1160935Sash, agree about Edwards teaching style…. wish he held workshops in Thailand…. lol
I have everything I can find of his videos, all of the stuff at Jerry’s etc. Also have his book Luminous Watercolor Landscapes, another treasure for me, along with some DVD.
The real key to this video for me was the visualization of the paint thickness and how to test it yourself…. pretty simple, requires paint and a finger duh!
Bernie
If you can't stand the answer; do NOT ask the question
April 25, 2012 at 9:43 pm #1160941That was a good article. I’m a new kid on the block. What a wealth of information and fun! Thanks
April 26, 2012 at 1:20 am #1160929I’m confused where the green comes into the question lol. But handprint has a couple of helpful articles on paper wetness and the different consistencies of paint. They’re also good to read if you’re having trouble sleeping.
http://www.handprint.com/HP/WCL/tech23a.html
http://www.handprint.com/HP/WCL/wet1.html[FONT=Century Gothic] pumk[/B][/COLOR][FONT=Century Gothic]i[/B][/COLOR][FONT=Century Gothic]n [FONT=Century Gothic]
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[/B][/COLOR]April 26, 2012 at 4:54 am #1160936I’m confused where the green comes into the question lol. [URL=http://www.handprint.com/HP/WCL/wet1.html]l[/URL]
After giving advice on the different uses of rounds and flats he goes into complementary grays and mixing greens.
Admittedly areas where beginners struggle.
B
If you can't stand the answer; do NOT ask the question
April 26, 2012 at 6:03 am #1160920This is what I do also.
Zbucvic has a range of paint to water ratios that he describes as Tea, Coffee, Milk, Cream and Butter.
Doug
C&C WELCOMEDJan
April 26, 2012 at 9:27 am #1160937Yep I’ve heard of the tea,coffee etc. model…but trying to visualize or implement the system has befuddled me for ever….
When I spill my tea or coffee or milk or beer it all runs away at the same speed. Cream and melted butter (depending on whether light cream, reg cream or whipping cream all have a different consistency), melted butter – how melted? lol {clarified or un-clarified????…yes I’m also and avid cook }
My point was and is I had never seen it described visually as is shown in the video.
For those of us whom have the same issue as I did this helps a LOT..
Visual identification is a valuable learning tool and its the first time I have seen it demonstrated this way…..
Bernie
EDIT: I never add anything to tea or coffee, straight for me… my beer is also additive free
If you can't stand the answer; do NOT ask the question
April 26, 2012 at 10:45 am #1160904Butter is paint straight from the tube.
Doug
We must leave our mark on this worldApril 26, 2012 at 12:51 pm #1160933Okay, I have J. Zbukvic’s book right in front of me and went to his workshop last April. There are great differences between pigment consistencies so here is what he has to say.
NOTE: He’s talking about the physical quality of the paint/water you’ve mixed, not it’s color.
Here is what he says quoted and/or paraphrased:
TEA is for the lightest toned wash, washes run freely on a palette tilted side to side and will form a puddle in the corner of your palette. It will bead readily and spread easily on the paper. Think of a weak cup of tea with no milk or cream (added to it).
Used for luminous skies and light areas in the painting or barely discernable shapes in the mist. Rarely used to paint individual shapes unless they are surrounded by a darker value to define them. It will dry much lighter than it appears on the palette. You cannot dry brush with it because it will hardly leave a mark.“COFFEE: Wash used for quarter tones. Runs freely, but less than tea. “A good strong coffee has much more substance…A wash of such consistency will leave behind quite a tone. It you do the tilt test with your palette, this mixture will also run freely, but will leave behind a thin film of pigment and will appear much darker than the tea wash. It will not lose much in intensity when it dries.
Coffee consistency can be used for many shapes of reasonable presence. Painted on damp or moist paper you can create distant ranges, clouds, misty shapes or anything within your painting requiring one-quarter tone. In lighter key pictures the COFFEE consistency can be a predominant wash and when contrasted with something much darker can provide most of the atmosphere. It is strong enough to create a contrast with white paper. It is perfect for backgrounds and gentle shading. It can be dry brushed to create wispy lines.”MILK: Great for pure color statements when creating strong, colorful images. This is your old fashioned (full fat variety) milk. For half toned washes that will move on the palette in a much slower manner and will leave quite a coating of pigment behind.
Shapes painted with ‘milk’ will be relatively solid in appearance. When a milk wash dries it will hardly lose any of its strength and can be used for most landscapes in the middle distance and foreground.
A milk wash has to be handled carefully because it will quickly become muddy if brushed to much. It can be dry brushed effectively.CREAM: Will not bead. Fantastic for the strongest color notes in powerful, rich paintings. Refers to the cream of a fairly runny variety, not thickened, rich cream. (You’ll have to figure out what he means here. To me it would be “whipping cream” IMO or slightly thicker). This mixture will move lazily on the palette, if at all. It should be sticky enough to completely cover the surface of the palette but runny enough to easily spread over the paper…… This mixture is too thick to bead. Cream mixes are generally reserved for large dark areas such as shadows, dark trees, rocks, dry branches and anything else of substance. Great for broken edges and foreground shapes. Still not strong enough for the darkest darks but will make light areas appear lighter and create great contrast with white paper. Cream is the best mix for dry brushing.”
BUTTER: Full tone pigment, no water. Thick and sticky like shoe polish. You cannot go any stronger or richer than this. Quite simply, this is pure pigment with hardly any or no water added at all, virtually straight from the tube. It will stick to the palette like honey and should not move even if the palette is vertical. It makes the transparent washes appear more so, and adds strength to a gentle medium (tone). …… Don’t dry brush it too much. It must also be used sparingly and directly or it will look dirty. Butter consistency pigment is good for solid color in small doses, such as stop-lights and small figures. It should be reserved for the very darkest darks when finishing your painting with those last magic touches.”
So that is what J. Zbukvic has to say about the differences in pigment consistency when applied to the paper.
Hopefully that is helpful to someone.
Happy painting! NicoleApril 28, 2012 at 4:45 am #1160912An alternative approach worth spending some time on is seeing how you can deliver virtually any shade or tint with any single degree of wetness; in other words, seeing that value is NOT related to or dependent on wetness, except at the darkest end of the dark scale, where there’s only so much you can dilute the “butter” without lightening it.
I’d say that’s the first skill relating to wetness control that it’s important to master, not so much knowing the differences between “coffee, tea, milk, cream and butter”. It’s knowing (or sensing) how to match the wetness of new paint to existing paint when you want to bring in a new value and/or new hue without changing the texture or spoiling your wash.
I think one would do better to have the baseline of that skill before trying to make controlled sense of mis-matching wetnesses, and from there, this will come quite naturally.
***
Does anybody (including Zbukvic) actually USE or think about all those food metaphors when painting? The whole thing feels like something cooked up way after the fact by an over-thinking editor as a marketing hook (it was those pages that they ran in the first ads)—an attractive way to appear helpful without actually being helpful.
I mean, you’d have to have poured out some of each liquid and pushed it around with a brush to have any useful, transferable sense of how they’d feel and look on a palette, a brush, or on paper, wouldn’t you? Or to stir up enough paint to these consistencies to jiggle them around in a cup…
A few minutes, or days, of playing with actual paint, water and a brush gives you a much better, simpler idea of what the range of options is without needing to make a long, complicated, imaginary detour into the kitchen to make sense of what’s right in front of your eyes…no?
Just saying…
dpc
(a lapsed w/c purist)
Eyes & Skies; My Daily Painting blog: http://eyesandskies.blogspot.com/
http://dpc-watermedia.blogspot.com/ -
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