Step-by-step mastering of watercolor painting for beginners: tips for children and adults. How to learn to paint watercolor from scratch

Try putting a rich stroke of paint on paper. Before it dries, add a smear of a different color to it. The last stroke of paint will flow into the previous paint, thereby creating a patch of color, with jagged edges.

However, this effect is not obtained on any paper. The more absorbent and grainy the paper, the less the ink will spread over it. And vice versa: on thick and smooth paper, the spreading will be maximum. With the acquisition of some experience, using this technique will become easier. It will be possible to control the dissection of the paint on the sheet.

Even this simple technique in the initial stages may not give the expected result. In case of failure, you can simply wash off the paint and start over. This technique is widely applicable in the practice of professional artists, both for drawing large objects (water and sky), and for local areas of the picture (flower petals).

The effects created by paint smudges are almost impossible to recreate with a brush. This is their uniqueness. For example, to achieve the effect of reflection on the surface of the water, you can add highly diluted paint or water to previously applied and already dried paint. Fresh paint will begin to spread, thereby forming blurry edges, like a reflection in water covered with ripples. True, it will take some experience to be able to accurately determine whether the paint has dried on the first layer.

Inventory

brushes

• The watercolor brush must meet the following requirements:

  1. absorb and retain water well;

  2 .be flexible;

  3. it is easy to take the previous form after a smear;

  4. when applying long or point strokes, her hairs should not bristle.

• Unlike other types of brushes, watercolor brushes have short handles.

Wide flat brush(1) pretty tough. It allows you to remove or wipe the paint and makes the job very easy.

Blur brush(3) - A rather large round soft brush that allows you to work on large areas, such as the background. No brush is as good at taking different shapes and holding the right amount of paint and water and not drying out.

Working brushes - their size depends on the features of the technique. Synthetic flat brush (2), synthetic small round brush (4), kolinsky hair small round brush (5).

Paper

• Paper for drawing with watercolors should not delaminate when you erase the paint, warp, paint should not drain on it.

• The paper must be white. If you want to use a variety of colors, then white paper will be easier to work with. On tinted paper, colors may change in unpredictable ways.

• The paper must be glued. This means that water will be absorbed relatively slowly. In addition, the rapid and strong absorption of water leads to excessive lightening of the ink laid on the paper. Watercolor paper, sold in packs of several A3 sheets, usually suffers from both yellowness and poor gluing.

• The paper must be thick enough

• Grain is like the degree of smoothness of paper:

  1. fine grain paper is very smooth. Such paper is used for works involving careful transfer of details. On such paper, the smear encounters almost no obstacles.

  2. medium grain paper. This paper is the most commonly used. It is suitable for any work. Albums for watercolors are most often made from this paper.

  3. Coarse paper has a slightly rough surface. Has a distinct texture. It is used, as a rule, for special works. Such paper is characterized by a high density, very often such paper is made by hand.

  The most common watercolor paper has a medium grain and a weight of 250gsm.

• Thin paper or non-grain paper should not be used as it will This paper does not absorb well and warps when wet.

Paints

Bought school watercolors? This is also an option, but it is better to take professional paints for artists.

More or less suitable "honey watercolor paints" produced in St. Petersburg

Watercolor paints are available in plastic trays and in tubes.

Paints in baths require a little more effort in preparation for work: you need to drop a drop of water from the brush into the bath so that the paints get a little wet. It is more convenient to use such paints, because. they are bred right in the bath and after the end of the drawing they remain there. In the initial stages, it is recommended to use paints in trays.

Paints in tubes recommended for those who already have some experience with watercolor. The artist independently forms a set of colors, guided by his own needs. A ready-made set in tubes with a dozen colors can be recommended to amateur artists.

Number of colors in the set

The kits can contain from 12 to 36 colors, but not all of them will be used. It is absolutely not necessary to have a large number of colors in the set, moreover, it is simply inconvenient. It is advisable to try all possible combinations of colors in order to know which combinations give dirt, and which ones give unusual colors that are not in the set.

No more than ten of the most commonly used colors are selected for work. Most often, these are blue, cadmium yellow, red and orange, ocher, umber, emerald green, neutral black.

In general, paints are divided into two groups - warm and cold. Warm colors include yellow, orange, red, brown, that is, all paints that basically contain one or another amount of red or yellow color. To the group of cold - blue, blue, green, purple, if they are dominated by coldish blue shades. Green, purple, gray and black colors can be either cold or warm, depending on the characteristics of the color scheme and the influence of the environment. The colors blue, yellow, red are the main ones, the rest obtained by mixing are considered derivatives - warm or cold, depending on the composition colors. Even neutral colors such as gray and black contain countless nuances that are sometimes difficult to determine by the quality of the color. If we take a group of warm colors, for example, reds, and compare them with each other in terms of heat and coldness, then it is noticeable that in this group, in relation to each other, there are colors that are colder and warmer.

For beginners, it is recommended to take: yellow, red, blue and black, each in 2 shades of cold and warm. All other colors are obtained by mixing the available ones.

Of course, watercolor painting is much more difficult than, for example, gouache or oil paints. But you can try to make small transparent and delicate works, make sure that painting with paints is not so scary, but on the contrary, it is unusually pleasant.

Watercolor strokes are usually made transparent without using White color. It is assumed that the whitest part of the composition is the color of the sheet of paper.
Watercolor work is almost impossible to fix, so try to get it right the first time. You need to start with the simplest compositions and slowly move on to more complex works.

Try just mixing a few colors first and see how they flow naturally into each other.

Wet a small piece of paper with water (just don't create puddles, the paper should be damp) and brush over the wet surface with the paint brush. Pick up paint on the brush a large number of, remove the excess on the edge of a glass of water.

Draw with the tip of the brush, do not press hard on it, lightly, airily.
Have you tried? The paint should flow beautifully, next, make another stroke with another paint and see how they flow into each other. Do not rub, do not mix more than three colors in one place - you will get dirty stains.

Now let's move on to our colors.

Let's draw a sketch of flowers first with a pencil.

Let's make a background. Carefully, trying not to dry the paint (that is, do not let the strokes dry out too much so that the boundaries between them are not noticeable and sharp), draw the background. All strokes should flow into each other, no traces of “pencil coloring” should be visible. Use light green paint, yellow and ocher.

Hi all! You really asked me to publish watercolor painting lessons, and I thought for a long time where to find suitable material, because this topic is not new, and there is already a lot of different information on the Internet, so I decided not to invent, but to use the materials of foreign authors. This article is the first, but not the last. I hope you enjoy it and find it useful!

This article covers the basics you need to know to get started with watercolor. However, if you keep scratching your head after reading this, then please feel free to ask questions in the comments! I will answer you with pleasure!

Before I started writing this article, I decided to do a little research on the Internet on painting watercolor for beginners. That way, I reasoned, I wouldn't miss a single moment and write a better post. But good God.. I've been painting with watercolors all my life and the information I found on Google stunned me. After three too many overwhelming articles, I threw up my hands and decided that I would show you how I, personally, work with watercolor - and the adjective for my watercolor approach is “simple”.

Tools and materials

First, I want to talk about the materials and tools that you will need. Of course, the most obvious tool would be a watercolor set.

I prefer the set from Greenleaf & Blueberry. It's a little pricey, but I love it! However, if you are just starting out, there is no need to invest in expensive kits.

Advice from the site:

Go to the nearest art store and buy an art set of watercolor paints that suits your price, as long as it is not for children 😉

If you live in the outback, where it is difficult to find such a product, then you can order a set through an online store. So that you can navigate by cost, I throw off examples of sets that are easy to find in our country:

Finally, you will need pure water and fabric(I use an old dinner napkin) or paper towel to blot the brush.

Any dish will do, I use an old mug.

Watercolor transparency

The great thing about painting with watercolors is that you have complete control over the transparency of the paint. Watch how one color can change depending on the ratio of water and paint on the brush!

The picture on the left shows what a stroke looks like when there is a lot of water and a little paint. In the illustration in the middle, a more equal ratio of water and paint. On the right picture more paint than water.

You might be thinking, “That’s all well and good, but how can I control this water/paint ratio?” Before you do anything, apply a drop or two of water directly to the cuvette you plan to use. This will dampen the paint and make it ready to go. Then, you can do one of two things:

1. Use a palette
You can take a palette and mix three different shades of the same color on it. For the first color, use the brush to apply about eight drops of water into the indentation. Then, dip the still wet brush into the already dampened watercolor, and transfer the color to the palette.

Apply about five drops of water to the second recess. Again, dip the still wet brush into the watercolor and transfer the color into the water. Be sure to shake the brush so that all the paint comes off it! If this new color very similar to your first one, add more paint.

For the darkest shade, you'll just be working directly with paint from the pan, the shade should be very saturated.

2. We work directly from the watercolor set
You can use the concentration of water on the brush to control the tone of the paint. If you want a very light shade, dampen the brush well with water and touch the tip of the brush to the paint. If you find that the concentration of the paint is too high when transferring to paper, dip the brush into the water again and apply this water directly to the paint on the paper. The color will become more transparent! For midtones, you'll still be painting with a wet brush, but with more paint. For dark tones, I blot the brush with a tissue (it will still be damp, but not saturated), and then I take the paint directly from the set.

Mixing

The reason we learned about transparency is the blending and overlaying of colors. With the help of various shades of the same color, you can make any image real. I'm going to show you how to turn a circle into a ball using watercolor blending and transparency:

1. First, draw a circle of the lightest shade.

2. Assume the light is in the upper right side as shown in the picture. Accordingly, the shadow will be in the lower left corner of the circle. To start painting the shadow, pick up your medium shade with a brush. Draw the shadow as if it is "embracing" the circle in the form of a crescent, like this:

3. You can see that there is now a certain separation between the shadow and the light part. To get rid of this difference and create a smooth transition, you need to mix the colors together - this is simple task when painting with watercolors! To mix, dip the brush in water to wash any remaining paint off the brush. Dry the brush to make sure all the paint is gone, then wet the bristles of the brush again with water. Then, put the brush on the separation between the shadow and the light part and drag the middle shade with water, it will blur. Soon, you won't be able to tell where the midtone and light ends and where the shadow begins!

4. Now it's time to add a dark shadow to the bottom of the circle. Go with a darker shade around the bottom of the sphere, as in the photo.

5. Mix the dark shade the same way you did with the medium shade, and voila!

6. You can add a drop shadow if you like. To do this, draw thin line on the opposite side of the light under the sphere, like this:

Then, you need to draw the color with a brush dipped in water until it disappears.

You may find it easier to understand the concept of blending/shading if you watch the video:

If you want to practice mixing and shaping more, I would recommend drawing these shapes in different colors:

You could make a sphere green, a cube blue, etc. Drawing shapes like these helps you understand how to make objects look three-dimensional. Yes, it can be a bit boring... but so rewarding!

Mixing watercolor

To mix watercolor, you definitely need a palette, whether it's built into your kit or standalone. The process of mixing colors is simple: you need to put one color on the palette, and then add another color. Mix them together and you get a new color!

If you have a small selection of colors in a set, knowledge of blending will come in very handy. There are many sources that tell you what colors to mix together to achieve the desired result.

If your mixed color dries in your palette, don't worry. You can re-wet it and it will be as good as new, no matter how much time has passed.

How to draw watercolor paints. Tips for beginners.

Watercolor- This is a paint that is diluted and easily washed off with water. Watercolor paint has amazing properties that give the drawings a special transparency. The technique of drawing with watercolors requires certain skills and knowledge. Artists working with watercolors can accurately determine the amount of water to achieve the desired shade.

You will need:

Paper, brushes, watercolors, tablet, water container, paper napkins.

Instruction:

1. Paper for watercolor.

Buy special paper for watercolor painting, the texture of which will allow you to get the best result. Paper is smooth and textured of different densities. Thick paper is more expensive as it is more resistant to water. Such paper can be moistened and stretched onto the tablet. If you need to get graininess in the drawing - buy rough paper.

2. You need to decide on the choice of brushes.

To get started, you should purchase a soft brush made of squirrel or artificial hair. The price of a brush, as a rule, will tell you about its quality. Cheap brushes are not very suitable for watercolor.

Necessary brushes - round, flat, oval. The round brush will be your main tool. Used for applying large volumes of paint. With a flat brush it is convenient to moisten the paper with water. Oval brush - for drawing details.

3. Brush care.

Now prepare two containers for water. In one you will wash the brush. Paper towels are also useful for removing excess paint from the brushes.

4. Paper preparation.

Stretch evenly moistened paper over the tablet and reinforce the sheet along the edges.

As it dries, the sheet will take on a flat and tense appearance. And it will be so in the process of drawing.

5. Drawing on wet.

You can start drawing on wet paper. This drawing technique has its own characteristics. Your tablet with a sheet of paper should be placed on a horizontal surface so that the paint does not bleed to the bottom. If the paper is too damp, blot with a tissue. Remove excess paint with a dry brush.

6. Apply the paint by lightly touching the paper with the brush.

Allow the previous stroke to dry before applying a new brushstroke. Start painting with watercolors from above, choosing the color you need on the palette in advance. The role of white paint is performed by paper. Therefore, it is necessary to outline the outlines of the future drawing in advance.

7. Good advice.

Remember that it is the fluidity of watercolor paint, transparency and fusion of strokes that create charm. watercolor technique. The stroke must be wet, otherwise the movement of your brush will be visible. Try to determine in advance the tone of the picture you need. Compensate for the shade that does not suit you with the following strokes. The smear should be in the form of a stroke. When drawing with strokes, try to capture the border of the previous stroke. Thus, you will get a smooth transition from stroke to stroke. Soften the edges of the transitions with a dry brush.

8. For beginners.

If this is your first time painting with watercolors, then first make a one-color drawing, any dark paint. In this case, this technique will help you figure out what color the paint will be after it dries. Rinse the brush frequently for pure tones.

Each of us is an artist at heart. Remember the golden moments of childhood, when we enthusiastically painted with paints “kalyaki-malaki”. The art of painting is the greatest mystery in the world. With the help of paints and brushes, real miracles appear on the canvas. Many mistakenly believe that they do not have artistic talent. In fact, anyone can learn to paint with paints. How to paint real works of art with watercolors? To do this, you only need to follow simple recommendations.

What will we need?

So, we decided to enter the world of art and become artists. How to paint with watercolor correctly? This will require the following tools:

• paints;
• brushes;
• palette;
• sheets of paper.

The choice of accessories should be taken very carefully. The final result - a work of art - depends on them.

Choosing colors

How to paint with watercolors yourself? First of all, you need to choose the right colors. On the shelves of art stores presented great amount watercolor paints. Which one is better to choose?

Do not look at the price category here. High cost is not always a guarantee of quality.

It is better to choose paints made on the basis of beeswax. On the cover should be the inscription "honey". They have the brightest color.

Paint brushes

Brushes have at least importance. Which of them are most suitable for watercolor?

The brush should be soft and pick up paint well. Its tip must be pointed. The bristles of the brush should be well fixed on the base. Best Option there will be brushes made of squirrel wool. Their bristles correspond to the declared parameters.

How many brushes will you need? To paint small parts of the picture, you should purchase a thin brush (number 1 or 2). For the main part - greater thickness (numbers 5-6 or 7).

Palette

The palette serves as a kind of “draft”, a place for mixing paints. Several colors are applied to the palette different colors, mix them. The result is the desired shade.

You can purchase a ready-made plastic palette. You can also do it yourself. For this, a sheet of thick paper is suitable, which should be folded around the edges.

Choosing watercolor paper

The process of choosing paper should be treated with special attention. The fact is that watercolor is a translucent paint. It requires a lot of water to work. If you draw on plain paper, it can quickly get wet from water. It is better to purchase special paper for watercolor. It is denser and thicker. Its surface is rough. Water particles get stuck on the rough surface of the paper. This prevents spreading.

Let's start drawing

How to paint with watercolors yourself? Having studied the basic features of watercolor paint, we know that it requires a large amount of water. The drawing is translucent, airy, flying. This effect is due to the structure of the paint.

There are 2 main watercolor painting techniques:

1. Dry technology.
2. Raw paper technique.

Everyone is familiar with the basics of dry technique since childhood: we pick up paint on a brush and draw. Depending on the type of drawing, you can pre-draw its outline with a pencil.

To get the desired color, you need to dip the brush in water, then in the desired paint and apply it to the palette. After that, the brush is washed with water and lowered into the paint of a different color. The resulting colors are mixed on the palette. The result will be the desired shade.

What is the difference between watercolor painting on wet paper? This technique is quite interesting, because. it allows you to create an unusual effect. To do this, before you start drawing, you should moisten a sheet of paper well with water. Until it dries, watercolor paint is applied to the wet paper. When mixed with water, it spreads, leaving fancy patterns on paper.

Let's draw

So, we purchased materials for work. Learned basic drawing techniques. Now you can proceed directly to the creative process.

How to paint with watercolor for beginners? For starters, it is recommended to try to study the paint. What will be required for this? Consider the basic lessons of acquaintance with paints:

1. We study colors. Take a leaf watercolor paper. Pick up the color you like with the brush. Put it on paper. Look at the effect. Now increase the amount of pressure on the brush. See how the color has changed (it should darken). Now type on a brush more water and dip it in paint. Draw a wet brush over the paper - the picture will be translucent.
2. We mix colors. Try mixing several colors. What shades are the result?
3. Apply yellow, orange, red to the sheet. Study them. What emotions do they evoke? Now apply blue, purple, black to the sheet. What are the feelings now?
4. We draw from nature. Now we need to learn how to display the objects around us. Put an apple in front of you. Study it carefully. See what color it is. Try to draw it.

Practical work

After learning the basic skills of the art of painting, you can move on to independent work.

Learning to paint objects around us in watercolor. Look around. What do you see? You can draw a still life. To do this, put in front of you a few items of utensils and any fruit. Try to picture them.

What else can be painted with watercolors? There are no restrictions here. It all depends on the imagination of the artist. You can draw everything that surrounds us. You can draw your own invented world.

You can start learning the basic techniques of working with watercolors by painting flowers and trees.

How to draw a flower?

Draw a flower with watercolors yourself:

1. Think about what flower to draw.
2. Explore its primary colors.
3. With help simple pencil draw the main outline on the paper.
4. Choose a paint for the background and paint over it.
5. After the background is dry, you can start painting with watercolors.
6. Paint over the flower with translucent paint.
7. After the watercolor has dried, draw the outline with a darker paint.
8. After the drawing has dried, place accents on the flower. This will give it volume. To place accents, it is necessary to apply several dense strokes along the contour of the flower with contrasting paint. Our drawing is ready.

Watercolor painting is easy and very an exciting activity. Each of us can feel like a real artist, creating whole works of art. You just have to listen to the suggested advice.

The natural composition of watercolors is a pounded pigment with natural adhesives - gum arabic, casein or milk phosphoprotein, dextrin, honey, phenol. The paint is applied with water with a brush on the surface of the paper. This term denotes work done in that environment. Pigments are usually transparent, but can be made opaque by mixing with white - in this form the paint is known as gouache.

Watercolor differs from other types of painting in the variety of techniques.
Weightless light paint gives freshness and luminosity in calligraphic strokes, which gives the work an atmosphere and weightlessness. There is one fundamental difference between watercolor and other mediums of painting - its transparency.

The artist applies oil from one opaque color to another until he achieves the desired result. Watercolor - universal remedy drawing, because it makes it possible to reproduce all genres, since the water base allows you to get unique and unpredictable effects. For abstract style random scattered watercolor strokes on wet paper help to achieve a blur effect.

Painting of the Northern Renaissance

Watercolors on paper can melt, spread, and blends create beautiful combination flowers in painting of different styles.

Working methods

Watercolor is the freest form of painting due to its transparent watery nature. There are certain painting techniques for working with watercolors, but the most popular ones are:

Differential Blur

This is the main way artists work and is achieved by wetting paper in a specific area and applying pigment to the surface from top to bottom. The technique is applied for a massive image of the sky, water, meadows and allows you to experiment with various shades. The paper rises almost vertically, and on a damp surface the colors flow in all directions. The technique requires drying naturally.

Glazing

This method is similar to blurring, but requires the use of a pigment that is applied to a dry sheet. The method actually adjusts color and tone, ideal colors and transitions. Dry each color separately before applying the next.

"Wet on wet"

The "A la Prima" method is the process of wetting the paper before applying the pigment. To do this, use a large brush or sponge to evenly distribute water over a sheet of watercolor paper. The technique creates beautiful blurred shapes and colors, soft shades and color transitions in the works.

Dry brush technique in painting

"Dry brush"

For drawing, a barely damp, harsh brush with a lot of paint on dry paper is used. On an uneven surface, a clear hard marked mark is obtained, granular effects similar to pencil drawing. Entire compositions are made in this way, also used to enliven a dull background.

flushing

The process of removing paint after application and complete drying. The area that needs to be changed, to make the color deeper or to give volume, is moistened with water, the paint is blotted with a cloth. The technique creates complex shapes, lines, especially if strips of paper are used to mask areas of pigment removal in the painting.

Effect of water on paint

When the applied watercolor in the drawing dries, you can use a clean wet brush to drop water on the desired area to obtain the effects of layering, cracking, roundness, volume.

Glaze

This is a method of layering watercolor from a light tone at the base to a darker shade on top. Watercolor is applied with transparent, thinnest strokes after the previous layer of work has dried. The result is a three-dimensional image, where the colors do not mix, but complement each other and allow you to see the border of each layer.

Batik painting technique

Author Natalia Shevchenko

scratching

By scratching or removing some areas of the painted dry surface, lighter areas of the same tone are created.

Disguise

If it is required to keep some areas white during the work, they use a reserve, that is, they cover the necessary places with paraffin or wax disguise, which, after the work has completely dried, I remove with a brush or roll into a ball with my hands.

Addendum

Adding another color to the wet area of ​​the painting allows it to merge and branch out, creating interesting illusions. The method gives interesting and vibrant color gradations that cannot be obtained by mixing the pigment on the palette.

Notable artists

Some famous artists working with watercolors often used similar effects in their work:

Pastose painting technique

Watercolorists learned to take advantage of the unexpected results of painting. Greatest Masters painting practiced spontaneity. Artists improvised to effectively apply the power of watercolor.

English School

The classical painting technique was perfected in England in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries:

Watercolor is a tradition that has its own chronicle in history. Primitive used pigments mixed with water to rock paintings and applied them with fingers, sticks and bones. The ancient Egyptians used water-based paints to decorate the walls of temples and tombs and created the first designs on papyrus.

Sfumato painting technique

Eastern school

In the Far and Middle East, the first watercolor schools had individual style- Chinese and Japanese masters drawing on silk and exquisite handmade rice paper. Their art was filled with literary allusion and calligraphy. But the main image remained the typically contemplative landscape that became a central aspect of the watercolor tradition in later centuries. In India and Persia, opaque gouaches were used for religious images.

Middle Ages

In the Middle Ages, the monks of Europe used tempera to draw manuscripts - books were considered the most important form of art and the equivalent easel painting. The monks copied the holy texts by hand on sheets of parchment made from sheepskin, calfskin. Sometimes entire pages were decorated with elaborate scrollwork and symbolic images.