http://watercolorweb.org Tips and Techniques for Painting in Watercolor Mon, 26 Oct 2009 16:41:47 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en Any time you select a set of paints, you are choosing a gamut or a range of colors that you can mix. There is no magical combination of paint that will enable you to mix every color. For example, you can mix orange from a combination of red and ... http://watercolorweb.org/2009/10/26/whats-my-palette/ Burnt umber is the base for darker skin tones. To that mixture I add cadmium red light and/or cadmium orange along with a some raw sienna. In the shadows, I often add ultramarine blue, perylene maroon, or ultramarine violet in the shadows. Here is an example of a quick ... http://watercolorweb.org/2009/10/16/how-to-paint-dark-skin-tones/ There are two rules for mixing darks in watercolor. First, use plenty of paint and water, and, second, pick the right combination of paints. If I have to paint a large dark passage, I will often set out my paints in mixing cups instead of grabbing paint from a palette ... http://watercolorweb.org/2009/10/12/how-to-mix-darks-in-watercolor/ Brands I use: M. Graham, Daniel Smith, Winsor & Newton, daVinci The daVinci version is slightly more saturated than the other brands. How I Use it: [caption id="attachment_202" align="alignleft" width="120" caption="Perylene Maroon with Phthalo Green"][/caption] [caption id="attachment_204" align="alignleft" width="120" caption="Perylene Maroon with Perylene Green"][/caption] For Making Darks: A deep crimson is essential to my palette, and ... http://watercolorweb.org/2009/10/10/perylene-maroon/ If you are going to paint a background, then you need to start working on your background early. Don't wait until until you finish the foreground to start worrying about background. The reason you should paint your background first is simple. The natural tendency in watercolor is to make ... http://watercolorweb.org/2009/01/03/painting-backgrounds/ Just about any combination of red, yellow, and blue will produce a flesh tone in watercolor. Each situation is different and no formula substitutes for your own observation. I will share what works for me. For average caucasian skin, I use Winsor & Newton Raw Sienna or Yellow Ochre (they're ... http://watercolorweb.org/2009/01/02/flesh-tones-in-watercolor/ My dog tore up my camera. Sigh. So, recently I have been shopping for a new camera. When I started painting, I always worked from life. A couple of years ago I realized that working from life, although it is a great way to work, severely restricted the ... http://watercolorweb.org/2008/12/30/choosing-a-camera-for-reference-photos/ Sometimes I want to create sketches at a small scale before do start a watercolor on a large sheet of paper, and I want the proportion of the sketch to match the proportion for the large sheet. Here's a simple calculator that will figure out the dimensions you should ... http://watercolorweb.org/2008/01/14/page-proportion-calculator/ I very often hear admonitions about the importance of value in painting. What I hear less frequently, except for advice that preliminary value sketches are helpful, is practical advice on how to go about choosing values. Although I don't have a specific formula for ... http://watercolorweb.org/2008/01/14/strategies-for-managing-value-in-watercolor/ I had noticed for several months ago that the light and shadow on an object can change very suddenly and dramatically. This phenomenon was especially noticeable around 1:30 in the afternoon. I figured that the sun must shift from the east side of the sky to the ... http://watercolorweb.org/2008/01/14/using-altitude-and-azimuth-tables-to-understand-light-shifts/