Artist tools: watercolor paint; description and how to choose

Watercolor — light paint, usually made on vegetable glue. Watercolors can be easily diluted with water, and also easily washed off. Lay down on the material in a thin layer. Due to this feature, watercolor allows you to create the effect of lightness and airiness, invisible color transitions.

The classic composition of watercolor: pigment (coloring matter); natural gum arabic (binder), with glycerin and/or honey as additives, to improve the plasticity and solubility of the binder; other chemicals added to extend the shelf life of the product.

Features of watercolor for which artists love it:

• When working with watercolors, the tone and texture of the base (paper, parchment, cardboard, silk, ivory) appear through the layers;
• The lack of specific relief smear;
• Rich color palette;
• The ability to change shades by applying dried layers of paint over the previous ones.
• As a rule, the following types of watercolor are distinguished: dry, semi-dry watercolor in cuvettes and tubes, liquid watercolor.

Dry watercolor is well suited for sketches or small graphic works.

Semi-dry watercolor is considered the most common and versatile type of watercolor. It is distributed in cuvettes and tubes. Watercolor in cuvettes is convenient to use when creating small works or sketches in the open air. To create large paintings it is more convenient to use watercolor in tubes, since these paints are easy to squeeze out in the right quantity, and they do not get dirty about each other.

Liquid watercolor is usually used to work with the airbrush. It contains more pigment, making the color more saturated.

Brushes and accessories

Working with watercolor should not be limited to one brush, for small and thin elements use thin brushes, for painting large areas - large ones.

It is most pleasant to work with round brushes of squirrel, badger or column.

To get started, when meeting with watercolor you can purchase a set of brushes No. 1-5, for drawing details. For large strokes brush number 11-14 is suitable. For large square strokes, you can use a flat synthetic brush number 14-18. In order not to suffer the problems of choice, storage and transportation, you can immediately purchase a set of brushes. After finishing work with watercolors, rinse the brush well enough with water and allow them to dry.

Fundamentals and soils

First of all, working with watercolors, it is necessary to consider that the surface will be exposed to water, and therefore should be able to withstand such loads. To work with watercolor paper or other surface must be slightly rough (grainy) or fibrous, and, of course, dense. The required amount of grain and its density depends on the drawing technique. When working with very small details (such as architectural or botanical painting), the grain is not appropriate, in this case, more often use paper with large fibers or Whatman paper.

Features of working with watercolor

In the composition of the watercolor pigment is used ground on the smallest particles, which can not be seen with the naked eye. When applying paint, these particles are evenly distributed over the surface, leaving between them a distance sufficient to transmit light to the base, and reflect it. White paper, shining through a layer of paint gives painting a fraction of luminosity.

When you start working with watercolor paints, it is necessary to slightly moisten with clean water, and wait until they swell a bit to be easy to type on the brush. It is better to look for a suitable color by mixing colors on the palette, which should correspond to the color of the surface used (if you draw on white paper - white).

To work with watercolors do not need to paint at all thick. It often seems to novice artists that thickly applied paint looks brighter and more beautiful, but after drying such work looks dirty, the freshness and brightness of colors disappears with moisture.

When working with watercolors, it is better to use two vessels with water, in one to rinse the brush, and from the other with a clean brush to draw in clear water for the dilution of paints. This will help keep the colors fresh and clean.

One of the useful properties of watercolor is the ability to change shades by applying dried layers of paint over the previous ones, this property allows you to expand the color palette to huge sizes. Of course, managing the color in this way is not easy, because by mixing different colors, transparency and clarity are gradually lost, and there is no way to correct the result, but for a master of watercolor, who is able to imagine the desired result, it will not be difficult.

Also, by overlaying each other, it is possible to increase the saturation, using paint of the same color.

Watercolor has its drawbacks - fast fading and lack of plasticity after application to the surface. When physical impacts on the base, the paint may begin to crumble.