I want to give a card to one of my teachers and wanted to decorate it personally, I have never been into painting, but I don’t want to get anyone else to paint for me. Wish me Luck
If you dont like the medium please dont hesitate to try out oil painting, it is Sooooooo much more forgiving than watercolors. Either way good luck with your art journey!!
These don’t look like water colors to me. Normally water is shades of blue. Unless you want to paint near an industrial waste site, then these colors are probably fine.
Your personal journey about that card is really sweet (Thanks for sharing it with us). Can’t wait for the finale.
Be careful about the paper. Make sure to use the tape to tension the paper so there won’t be any wrinkles and consider buying paper made specifically for watercolors.
Just fyi, OP , if you end up with a seriously buckled end result because water + paper = warp, please know that you really can iron it out. Do this BEFORE you seal the surface:
Put some plain paper on your ironing board, lay your painting face down, and use a low to medium heat setting (start with low and work up if you need to). Iron until flat. It will not hurt your watercolor painting at all. If you’re unsure, there are videos on Youtube.
However, a word of warning: if you’re doing mixed media, keep in mind that some materials will melt and smear (embossing powder, crayons, colored pencils, etc) but not regular pencil (graphite), charcoal, or marker. My suggestion would be to do your watercolors first (which is usually how it works out anyway) and iron if necessary, and then proceed to your other media.
And as long as I have your attention, don’t let anyone shame your beginning supplies. Everyone starts small, because that stuff can get truly expensive.
And for as many snotty Youtube watercolor videos I’ve seen titled “It’s Not Your Fault, It’s Your Paper!” and similar, I have news for them and you: cheap supplies are how you learn to work with any supplies you have, especially paper. Cheap paper is what shows you how to get the very best out of any paper you can buy, regardless of price range. There is one famous watercolorist, Winslow Homer, who regularly used the really bad paper he snagged from his job as a mapmaker for watercolor paintings that now hang in museums and sell for millions.
So if all you have today is copy paper, rock it! As you progress, you’ll be glad you stretched your knowledge this way. I still use the beginner stuff I have along with the more expensive stuff I got later, and honestly I prefer the less expensive stuff for certain projects.
I love watercolors. So fun. You’re gonna have a fantastic time, OP.
Thanks a lot, I actually went a step down and used old A4 sheets that were printed on one side lol, just because I always feel guilty wasting perfectly good papers, I will buy better ones for the actual thing though
I always feel guilty wasting perfectly good papers
Lol, me too. But if you can, watch some older artists on Youtube: more expensive papers just make certain things easier. Cheap papers make the same thing harder – NOT impossible.
That’s how cheap paper builds your skill: you’re forced to pay sharp attention to the dampness of the paper, the exact sheen of it in the light, to know when it’s ready for a blend or a scrape (where you scratch into wet paper to either create dark lines if it’s wetter or remove paint if it’s drier), etc.
I don’t know if you’re in the US but the paper I like most for watercolor is also one of the least expensive: Canson XL watercolor paper. It’s a nice, heavy 300g that takes a good bit of abuse from scratching, scrubbing, lifting, and pretty much anything else I want to do. ALL watercolor paper will buckle, but the heavier weights keep it to a minimum, and 300g is an all-around great weight (heavier weights are professional use and tend to get really expensive). Arteza I have also heard good things about, inexpensive and good, but Canson’s usually at the Walmart so I can just get some whenever I’m there and avoid Amazon, lol.
For painting boards, I save and use the clean tops of pizza boxes, lol. Any clean stiff cardboard will do, turn it over and use the plain backside so there’s no visual confusion, and cheap masking tape or washi to hold it down if you don’t feel like freestyling it, lol. For the copy paper practice I wouldn’t even worry about that, any tape you want to use. (You can also use scotch tape if you weaken the hold on it a bit by taping across your clothes before you put it on your paper, if you’re in a pinch and need a removable tape.)
Your watercolors came in a tray; that’s also a paint mixing tray. Take the paint tubes out while you’re painting and then rinse it afterwards to use for tube storage again. And use any old plastic container for water, etc. Now you’re all set!
Sure. When your watercolor painting dries, it’s perfect as-is, and you need do nothing more, especially if you know it’s going in a drawer or a frame or even in a pile of other watercolors in the corner, lol. However, it will react with any kind of moisture, because that’s what watercolors do. If your watercolor work gets wet or is in a really high humidity area, touching it or allowing it to touch anything else will smear the paint.
So if you have some work you really like and want to protect when it’s done, you can use a surface fixative (usually a spray) to protect it from moisture. But greeting cards don’t usually see a lot of water or humidity, so it’s up to you. It will not be obvious either way: fixatives are completely invisible to the eye until water is involved and then it’s pretty obvious what’s been sealed and what hasn’t been, lol.
I have a couple watercolor paintings hanging in my bathroom, for example, but it’s not a problem because I sealed them with a surface fixative as well as Dorland’s (a wax made specifically for artwork) and they’re behind glass, so the occasionally high humidity in there doesn’t matter at all. But that’s kind of an extreme case.
Fixatives are pretty cheap and a little goes a long way, but it’s up to you as to whether you want to use one. If you do, just remember that the fixative is the very LAST thing you put on, because you usually can’t work the painting after you’ve done it. (There are “workable” fixatives that you can put on and then still add to your work, but just how “workable” they are really depends on the specific fixative and the specific media you’re using, so don’t count on it.)
You said you are making cards; IMO you would be fine leaving your work as-is or sealing them. Honestly either way is fine, your choice. But if you do use one, make the fixative the very LAST thing you do to your art, at least until you have a chance to experiment with any fixative you buy. And of course, do any ironing prior. Hope this helps.
If you don’t want to share, at least keep photos for yourself. It Will be cool and useful for you in the future to look back at how your work has progressed or changed.
One could say that art in general is an act of making messes. That looks like a beautiful experiment in color. I’m new to painting myself. I’ve found some inspiration in the youtube channel Imperfect Paintings. You might find it inspiring as well.
This is the mess I made, looks pretty horrific lol, I dropped some color as well
Noooooo! What you see as mess, I see as courage with exploring colors, shapes, and composition, and learning how to mix, layer, and blend with watercolor. Some of what you just did by accident, like the red/yellow blend and drip to the right, other artists deliberately add as “texture” and “interest” and work very hard to get. Just wait til you start making cabbages and getting blooms (the weird dark lines you get from puddling water in one place). People work to get those too. It’s just a matter of getting them where you want them to be, which is a whole 'nother matter, lol.
You know what, this post is great for not only one, but two reasons: you decided to do something nice for another person, and you are getting to try a new skill in the process.
One thing was how fricking cheap they are, idk anything about quality, will have to see when I try but still, also there were others like this but half the price
Tbh, if anything is gonna fail, it’s my painting lol, but there are always colour pencils which are never gonna fail, but I really wanted to try something else
I think I am just gonna draw some gradients and stuff instead of something complicated
I used them as kids. Especially in art classes but for home painting, giving a kid the dried ones is more common. I assume it is because it is easier to store and to wash if when the kid put paint everywhere.
I have no idea as well lol, I saw some videos on YT and they were tubes though. Ig there might be other kinds, but I just picked the ones that seemed familiar
I’ve played around with both tubes and dry “blocks”. For best of both worlds, you can get palettes that come in a box with removable sections that can be filled with whatever color paint. I filled these with paint from tubes, and by keeping the box closed it will mostly retain moisture of the paint while storing. If left long enough they will dry out, but being water colors, I just mist them with water and they work again.
Also - you can get brushes that hold water! It’s basically a brush with a water chamber, and you squeeze it to put more water into the bristles. Makes it easy to travel, but for me it’s far less messy and keeps the colors cleaner.
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