The answer to water control problems when using watercolor.

hey friend in this video i'm gonna be sharing with you the secret to water control so it is a very common question and struggle this exercise or this one secret that i'm sharing with you in this video is going to demystify water control and really help you pinpoint your your issues and also develop practice and technique and um a world of knowledge through this one exercise so if you're ready then let's dive in i wanted to bring it back to the basics here and do this exercise called tea to butter all right so tea and butter literally think about the consistency of tea and it's gonna be on a scale all the way to butter so i'm just gonna circle out um you don't even have to really circle this out but just kind of so i make sure i have enough space i'm just gonna you can do squares or circles pencil in lightly five circles or squares these are going to be my little where i'm going to place my swatches and it's also good to pencil this out too because you're then going to see where the pencil starts to show through through the swatch on the more transparent swatches and you can use any type of brush i'm going to use a size 16 to get this going because you can obviously with your bigger brushes you're going to hold a lot more water with a synthetic sable brush or the aqua elite series from princeton is also a really great brush for holding a lot of water these brushes that hold a lot more water are going to be great for using the more tea and coffee is going to be our next one consistencies because those are going to be used for a lot of big sweeping washes over your entire sheet of paper and things like that so i would use our do this exercise with a darker color so that you can see it in a lot of your lighter colors the values aren't really going to shift all that much it's just going to be a thicker consistency but you're not going to see much of a shift in the actual color or the or the value so i'm going to use prussian blue and use prussian blue but first i'm going to write out what these are so our first consistency is going to be t and then we have coffee next will be milk think like whole milk something like a thicker milk and then cream heavy cream and butter and in this range is going to be a really great practice on understanding consistency for your pigment and water so then i'm going to go ahead and mix these up so i'm going to use prussian blue as my color again use something darker prussian blue um and sap green scarlet light could work even black tea let's think about steep tt and what that looks like you know if you were to literally spill some tea on your paper it's very watery the consistency you can see through it um through the coloring of the tea from the leaves and the tea so it's not very dark it's more transparent and that's the thing with watercolor with other painting mediums like oil or acrylic you don't really have to think about consistency because you just kind of work with the paint from the tube and you lighten it with white or however you're mixing your colors but with watercolor we have to be more of a student of the consistency of the pigment and water combinations and a lot of people just kind of skip over that and don't really practice it so think about what tea looks like looking at it in my palette this looks like a very obviously when i hold my palette up that's going to be a good example of how it runs and most of you are going to notice that my palette is kind of wicking away the paint and water and that's totally normal and that will wear off once you build up your mixture and then over time but don't worry about it so this is looking really good it's looking and obviously if i want to cover my whole sheet of paper with this consistency with this tea consistency that i'm gonna i'm gonna make a really large uh batch of this but right now i'm just doing this little circle so this is a very good tea mixture and i'm going to hold it up and do the test in my palette to see how it runs so obviously it's running really quickly so the drops of the of the mixture are running very rapidly as i lift my palate so that is what tea would do if i had it in a palette or on paper or whatever so and then oops there's some red still left over in this mixing wall so that's why it's going to look a little purple but if you want to make sure if you're also testing colors then obviously use a clean mixing well so we've got a good tea mixture and now we're going to test it on our paper to see what it looks like on paper so again this is the tea consistency and this is really good for your lighter values of colors especially the darker pigments so blues blacks uh even some reds greens um these you know are your wash colors that you're gonna cover like if you're painting an ocean scene let's say and you have a large area to cover this is your big broad washes but also if you look closely you can see the pencil lines underneath this swatch so your lighter values are more transparent you're going to see through them and therefore you're going to notice the pencil lines next we're going to mix up our coffee so technically coffee and tea obviously use about the same amount of water if you have an eight ounce cup you're gonna have an eight ounce um amount of water for both and it's the staining that darkens the value of the coffee versus the tea so i'm just grabbing a little bit more of my prussian blue mixture and adding it to my tea mixture and building it up with a little bit more water too but as i'm looking at it in my palette i can see that i'm seeing through it less than i was with the tea and we can do the running test and it's still dripping very rapidly but just a little bit less transparent than my tea mixture so there's not much difference between running between your tea and your coffee consistency it's darker um so we're adding a little bit more pigment to it and just a touch more water so it stays pretty you know pretty runny like coffee would be but again it's darker than tea i'm just going to grab a little bit more water and this is again for those of you who are really new to watercolor doing that running test in your palette is a really good idea of how thick the mixture is or the consistency [Music] and so as i place this on my paper obviously it's a darker value but it's also getting a little bit thicker but not noticeably thicker where we're seeing any sort of dry brush effect which we'd get in the more cream and butter stage these two values i would use for my lightest values when i'm painting either a realistic you know scene or uh florals my lighter values are going to be in the tea and coffee range consistency wise so you can even pencil that in here these are my light values and different pigments will give you different range different kind of range with your values so if i were using lemon yellow deep for this exercise for example you wouldn't see as stark of a difference between each um you know tea coffee milk cream butter consistency so it would be light yellow to dark yellow but it's it's not as much of a range with these darker colors so that's another exercise you can do is practicing it with multiple different pigments and then next we're going to get into the milk stage of consistency so this again is more of like a whole milk and if you were to picture like when you accidentally spill some milk on the counter or whatever it's a little bit thicker than tea and coffee and it's less transparent so we are adding more prussian blue and not much more water i'm gonna add just a tad so it's not getting too dried out because that would be in our cream and butter stage but we are getting that whole milky consistency and these different stages and consistency are going to react differently as well when you are painting with wet on wet or wet on dry you're going to want to use your thicker consistency stages for wet on dry effect which is going to give you that dry brush look and i'll show you some examples in a second but also each one of these consistency stages are going to react differently to a wet paper surface so if i have if i'm using wet on wet and i have water or a light wash down on this section of my paper and i punch in a color that's more like the tea consistency it's gonna spread like crazy but if i do it with the butter consistency it's gonna stay pretty much right in that range where i placed it on my paper and get a little fuzzy on the outside but it's gonna stay pretty crisp and then somewhere in between here is usually where i like to place in more of my wet and wet stuff depend depending on how much i want it to spread and blend and diffuse so our milk consistency we're doing a little pallet test it's still running but it takes a second to drip um it's not running as quickly as like tea and coffee again it's running and dripping but it's not like i have to hold it for a second now and then it drips so here's our whole milk and again the consistency it's thicker and it's made that makes the value darker this is when you start to not see the pencil lines underneath so a lot of people ask me this is another common question just to answer it a lot of people ask me how i get rid of the pencil lines underneath the watercolor and i always know ahead of time or usually know ahead of time if it is going to be covered up with the consistency of values that i'm going to use in that specific painting if it's not then i will either not use any pencil at all or sketch as lightly as i possibly can but usually i sketch before painting knowing ahead of time that i'm going to be able to cover it up with these milk and cream and butter consistencies that i'm using so the next is our cream mixture this is where we start to get a lot thicker it's going to feel really i mean buttery but not butter consistency quite yet the cream is probably my favorite consistency to paint with so i'm going to instead of going to my water cup to grab my water i'm going to be very careful to add uh to not add any more water at this stage to the mixture i have over here in my mixing well and i'm going to grab a kind of like a tacky amount on my brush amount of pigment or more prussian blue and then mix that in there and this is when it starts to really not move much when you do the drip test so i can kind of tell how it's moving in my palette by just swirling my brush around that i need a little bit more i want it to be a little bit thicker but not too much to where it's that buttery dry brush look so at this stage i'm going to test it out see how it's looking and it's still a little bit too drippy so we're going to continue to grab more pigment and you can even work with wet pigment straight from the tube too to get these thicker consistencies creamy and butter consistencies and it's a slower drip a little bit more that's good very slow drip all right and so with our cream consistency we are very dark with the color and you see how i lift my brush off and it's nothing is moving like this is still a puddle this is more like a really dark glaze of paint i love this consistency and it you basically when you cover that pigment over the surface area you can't see through it there's no transparency so these are going to be your darker values your coffee and milk mid-tones and then your milk and cream mid-tones to dark [Music] and then obviously cream and butter are going to be dark tones so for your butter consistency you're going to wash that brush off completely and get rid of soak up all of that water in your brush and with prussian blue i do dry my pigments in my palette ahead of time but with prussian blue it's still a very sticky and tacky like color in your palette even when it's dried actually most of these colors are so this will work but you can also do this to get the butter consistency a lot easier if you're just grabbing paint straight from the tube and grabbing a little bit of water just like barely touching it and this is going to be for your darkest tones it's also going to give you a lot of texture it's not going to cover the full surface area in the circle that i'm going to do when you're picking it up on your brush in your palette it's going to it's going to spread the hairs of your brush around and it's going to feel really heavy and tacky so that means of course if you're wanting these tea and coffee and milk consistencies that you need more water on your brush with the way it's feeling and looking on the paper but again the butter consistency is used for those darker values your darkest values and then obviously like if you want the dry brush effect so you can obviously pick up a lot of pigment a lot sooner with going straight from the tube but if you roll around quite a bit in these dried pigments if they're still kind of sticky tacky-like when they're wet you can do it as well so very very dry it's like spreading butter on toast scraping it around and i love doing dry brush when it calls for it for that rough texture because again with watercolor we're not using white paint to lighten our colors we're using water or you can get these textures from a dry brush look to maybe light on water effect like a glistening light on the ocean or something like that so those little peaks of the watercolor paper poking through the color are what's gonna show that light effect or glistening light effect or just give you a nice texture in whatever you're painting and then these are going to be your darkest values [Music] so the tea to butter consistency exercise is a great way of really feeling and observing your consistencies when you're painting anything your landscapes florals portraits animals doesn't matter so it's really all about being more of a student of an observer of how things feel and how things look before actually just going for it and hoping that it looks light or it looks dark or whatever so being a student and understanding consistency is a really big part of painting with watercolor okay so obviously this exercise is very eye opening it's also really cool to know but how do we apply it and how does it affect what we're painting so what i'm going to do is i'm going to show you how each one of these consistencies responds on water so again with watercolor consistency is a very important part or thing to understand but also how the consistency of what you have on your brush reacts to a dry surface versus a wet surface so we already know how it reacts to a dry surface our paper that we're painting on is dry and then this could also have a layer of dried paint underneath it and you would be able to see the underneath pigment underneath the tea and the coffee ranges and maybe even milk but underneath these you wouldn't see it because they're thicker but let's just talk about how these consistencies or ranges of consistencies will react um to wet and wet so i'm gonna just kind of glaze over with clean water or cleanish water on this section of my paper right here and then we're going to show how each one of these consistencies responds so using a wash brush or flat brush would cover the surface a lot quicker but i'm just going to make sure that my surface feels like tea or coffee so that it stays wet for a longer period of time because again if we go into these milk and cream consistencies first of all it's going to be less less transparent so i won't be able to see the lighter colors on top but it will also dry a lot quicker it won't move the pigment on top as much so if you want a lot of spread and a lot of blending to happen you want the base layer to not only be a consistency that's in the tea and coffee range but a lot of blend with the pigment on top is going to happen more with the coffee and tea ranges so i'm going to start with butter and work backwards so butter we barely have any water on our brush we're grabbing lots of pigment so that it's really really thick and i'm going to place that right here and kind of work my way down so you can see how it diffuses so this is obviously butter and it diffuses but it's not spreading let's go a little bit thicker and darker so it diffuses a little bit but it's not spreading and obviously there's a little bit of a puddle right there under for the from the base layer so it's kind of picking that up but butter it just kind of diffuses the edges of the stroke or the shape whatever you paint and then cream which i already have mixed up over here is a little bit more watery we'll go right here and it automatically spreads a whole lot more than our butter consistency and then same with milk we're adding some water because i'm working backwards from where i ended milk it's lighter and it's spreading easier i really like how the cream is spreading so it's getting kind of in these veins whereas milk is getting a little bit wild and then same thing with coffee and tea they'll just be way bigger so we got our coffee mixture much lighter and then our tea also lighter and by the time these two last ones dry they'll be spread probably into each other so you're not going to see any separation so again if you only want a little bit of the blending or diffused look you want your consistency on your on your brush to be more in the cream maybe milk but cream area and then obviously the least is going to be butter so like for example if i'm painting the background of this whale shark which is a chapter in my book that's coming out in summer 2023 called everyday watercolor oceans um the background is very uh blending it's very diffused spread pretty automatically and very quickly that was because the consistency was more in the coffee range however this black didn't diffuse as much and it was probably more of a milk or a cream and these waves another chapter in my upcoming book on top to show the shadows on the waves this was all wet and dry but if you want to show some soft blending between your shadows on your waves and the underneath layer then you would do wet and wet but using more of a buttery or cream consistency so there's a lot of magic that can happen a lot of nuance that can happen with the consistency of your paint and your water ratios in your palette and on your brush so practice this see how it reacts on a wet surface versus a dry surface and try out different pigments because blue um you know prussian blue in my palette spreads really nicely whereas a color more like aqua rose or even sap green they don't spread as quickly or as um as nicely as some other colors so practice it out um practice these two exercises and this will really help you develop and understand what consistency the different consistencies will get you in results with watercolor i hope that video was helpful for you you learned something super insightful this was just one part of a video on the complete beginner's guide to watercolor where i tackle the three most common questions that i get with watercolor so i've been teaching watercolor for almost a decade now and i get these questions over and over and over again it doesn't matter if you're a beginner or more advanced watercolorist these are by far the most three common most common watercolor questions that i get so check out that big video where you can find all three of those inside of that main video on the complete beginner's guide series that we've done and if you found something that was insightful in this video or you want to learn more about a specific topic drop it in the comments below i would love to read it and tackle it in one of my tutorials thanks again for watching and i'll see you in the next video [Music] [Music] you

Channel: Jenna Rainey

Views: 143,097

Keywords: how to control water in watercolor painting, water to paint ratio for watercolor, water control watercolor problems, watercolor problems, watercolor basics, watercolor basics for beginners, watercolor basics how much water to use, how much water to use in watercolor painting, watercolor tutorial for beginners, beginner watercolor mistakes, watercolor mistakes beginners make, jenna rainey watercolor, water control watercolor, watercolor for beginners, how to control watercolor

Id: MG7WfJ4vsoY

Length: 24min 13sec (1453 seconds)

Published: Thu Jan 20 2022