How to NOT OVERWORK Your Watercolors

hey what's going on leron here we're gonna jump straight into business i wanna show you a mistake that you probably make high probability and is killing your sense of freshness your watercolor paintings uh this is just something i see all the time with students so let me show you and sorry i need to have the camera low here because i really want to go deeper on the details but i do want you to see my palette as well so look at what i'm doing here i am mixing a just a bunch of paint right in the mixing area and i have this shape i need to fill in now reality is usually the shapes you need to fill in aren't that simple but we're going to start simple here is a mistake a lot of people make it has to do with how you mix it has to do with how you apply it has to do with your brush work and it just makes paintings still inaccurate and just not good okay so a lot of people make the mistake of being scared to mix using the entire well like i'm doing right now and the entire brush so you pick up a bit of paint and then you do this now what's wrong with that is just the tip of the brush like this is that once you and let me get my test paper here the problem is that once you thank your drawer for being stuck now is that you now have a difference in ratios in your brush you can't just use the tip of the brush you have to make the entire mix here homogeneous okay so you bring in some paint and you make the entire wash homogenous okay that's fine now here's what a lot of people do they don't have enough water in their mix and then they do this okay they can grab a bunch of paint and they start filling in their shape right so here i am filling in my shape and very often i see this this is not good okay don't do this don't do the framework top to bottom left to right right to left inside out whatever you have to do avoid this look at what happens here by the time i fill in the shape we already have some unevenness now here's where a lot of people you may do this to make the mistake the shape is not perfect it's not accurate enough let me just fix it right let me just fix some of these edges oh i missed the spot there let me just go ahead and do this again and again and again look at what happens already you can see that unevenness that staleness in the wash right so and then maybe you feel like oh this isn't dark enough you're gonna mix a darker mix of what most people do is they just pick up a bunch of dark paint they use it just with the tip of their brush and that's if you're lucky they picked up this much and then they go in they put it in and it's kind of okay but oh actually it wasn't dark enough so it lifts back and then okay this should be darker i'm thinking i'm darkening but what i'm actually doing is lifting paint causing cauliflowers making a big mess here's what i want you to do instead instead make sure your wash moves on the pallet you have it's wet enough right unless you're tackling a very dark wash you know exactly what you're doing make sure it moves on the pallet and here's what i want you to do okay don't do what i did here don't go back and oops i need this i need that look at what happens here it's a disaster here's what you do instead you put the paint you use accurate brush technique to just get it in in one go okay because what happens is this once you put paint to paper from the moment you put it it starts to dry and once you come back with that same mix you had here and you revisit it it's already dry but here you have the same level of wetness on your brush and it will create cauliflowers it will make a big mess you see this it's very subtle but this is gonna end up not looking good okay now here's where people have a problem reality is never as simple as um just you know here's the shape i'm filling it in the shapes are usually complex like this one here right it could be a street it could be whatever it is so mix enough i want you to mix enough so let's mix this kind of a gray here and make sure it flows okay make sure the shape flows start small top to bottom don't start doing this outline thing work top to bottom like that okay make sure the wash is wet enough and it moves enough because if you go too strong like here you're more likely to come back to an area with a very wet brush and it's starting to dry and then it makes a big mess okay and you just fill it in top to bottom you don't touch this area anymore you don't go back and touch it and see what happens maybe you miss this line should be a little like that not like this don't do any of that believe me what matters is the overall look the overall composition from far no one cares if you get the line here or there or in this angle or in that angle people see the entire image okay and you just keep moving and had i not used this wet of paint this would already be starting to dry and i'll already get a terrible cauliflower here now look at what i'm doing here i'm not revisiting this these areas i am not i'm also not adding water to my watch because if i add water i'll get a background upwards and i can show it to you here maybe we can do that but look don't obsess over the shape did i get this fully accurately no but but this is why you also want to improve your um brush control right so you can get these shapes right the first go you see any even here i got a bit of unevenness but that's fine no one will notice that right like no one will notice this but people will notice that um so don't obsess over it you want to see what happens if i revisit it look at how wet or dry this is okay let me revisit this shape that i don't think i got right look at this this is a disaster area it's not gonna work it's not gonna work look at what happens i'm lifting that's wrong okay now let me show you one more thing what i talked about just a second ago let's say i'm doing this right and i feel like i am running out of paint so i take a break and i bring some water in and i start to mix right remix what i need and here's the problem if you bring in water you have to bring more paint so let's say i didn't bring more paint i just go back and do this right because my wash is wet enough it's not going to be too bad but you will start to see how and it's very mild and i'm doing this at an angle i have about a 15 degree angle between my paper and my table but still look at what happens you see see this little thing here it almost would have flown back up unless i take all the precautions of having it wet enough doing the angle if i tilt this back now and we just wait a few seconds you will start to get a cauliflower here okay so what i want you to do instead of obsessing over how accurate the shape is did i get this edge to look good leave that no one cares about that what people care about is the overall composition avoid this right avoid these unevenness it's killing the freshness killing the vibe of your paintings just don't do it it's easy you can incorporate this advice right now right this second and stop over working now let me give you just a few final tips uh to conclude this know the shape you're gonna paint right this is easy just to shape you know exactly what you're gonna paint in a painting and here i have some work in progress to show you when you're doing this in the in the context of a full painting right i'll show you here it's very hard to know exactly what the shape you're painting is so think take a few seconds to plan it out figure out okay that's the these are the borders this is exactly what i'm going to paint figure out the value how dark is it going to be how light is it going to be how much flow you're going to have if you need a very dark value maybe start with a light wash and then do another one just to maintain some flow and not have it be too hard on yourself right but have a plan know what you're gonna paint the exact shape how uh what color you're gonna use how light or dark it's gonna be which is why i recommend working black and white because thinking about values how light or dark it is is much easier than thinking about colors right know that before you start painting the wash because otherwise you're going to get a lot of unevenness look at what i got here this cauliflower this and i'm the first to tell you this is not a big deal if you get these cauliflowers it's not the end of the world especially in the first washes but it is a big deal in the next washes and why not avoid it if you can keep your paintings fresh and whatnot so i hope that makes sense thank you so so much for watching if you want to learn how to paint like me enjoy let go and enjoy the painting process be sure to check out the frustration free water recorder course the link is in the description box below also you can check out the watercolor realism course you can check out the patreon i added it here for critiques i would be super grateful if you do all these things you help me make a living from what i love so thank you so so much for that and i will see you in the next video

Channel: Liron Yanconsky

Views: 1,076,434

Keywords: Watercolor tips and tricks, watercolor advice, watercolor trick, watercolor overwork, overworking watercolor, smooth watercolor wash, watercolor mud, watercolor muddy, watercolor cauliflower, watercolor problems, watercolor tips for beginners

Id: 5EyJ72tG2gI

Length: 8min 54sec (534 seconds)

Published: Tue Mar 01 2022