Hey, this is Eric from Cafe Watercolor.
Welcome to this week's Tip Tuesday.
Today I want to talk about mixture consistency.
This is something that many students have problems with,
and I have that problem when I just started.
Now as much as I want to give you a
secret, ninja trick that will transform
your sense of mixing, I need to be real with you.
This takes practice.
But I do want to offer you a good way
to practice your mixing, and that is: value study.
I think it's important to practice mixture consistency
before color mixing.
We often try to learn both at the same time,
and that is a bit overwhelming
especially if you are a beginner.
You need to worry about water and paint ratio
as well as the color you are mixing.
So instead lets focus on one thing at a time.
This is why value study is a very effective
way to practice your sense of mixture.
Since you are only using one color
you don't need to worry about mixing color at all.
You just need to focus on mixing different consistencies.
And no, you do not need to pick a complicated scenery,
just a simple object or a very simple scenery will do.
Use a single color like Neutral Tint,
Payne's Gray, I use cobalt black
from Mission Gold, it doesn't matter
as long as it can get nice and opaque.
Seriously, I wish this is something I did
when I started to learn watercolor.
This is going to make learning paint mixture
much easier.
I am going to do a very quick demo on value study,
but I'm pretty sure you saw some of it
from my channel already, but here it is.
Okay so, this is a photo that I shot
near where I work.
There is a little river,
and I saw this specific rock and I really liked
the reflection and the lighting.
So I'm not going to talk too much about
techniques, composition, things like that.
I am just mainly going to focus on the mixture itself.
So I am grab like a big brush and with some water
and I just clean my palette
so I got a bunch of dirty water,
and I am mixing the mixture for my middle value.
So just by looking at two different values on my palette,
you can see the difference between
the middle value mixture and the dirty water.
And that is something that you want
to start observing your palette is that
when you look at your palette,
you should have some idea what consistency
are you mixing right now.
So are you mixing sort of a moist consistency
for the middle value that I am painting right now.
You still see a little bit of droplets and streak
here and there and a little bit
of puddling, but not as big puddle as
look at the dirty water there,
so it's different.
So you need to start to look and feel
the difference between a kind of moist
middle value mixture, and a light watery wash.
So I'm just painting the big shape right now.
I am trying to connect all the middle value
together right now.
So the rock, and the rock bed, and the river,
and the reflection, I'm just trying to
connect everything into a single value right now.
So this is a good practice because
you want to mix a nice consistency throughout.
You don't want anything to all of a sudden
become very watery.
So now I am painting a lighter value
with a more watery mixture.
Now this is a very light wash because
I am mostly using dirty water so you can tell
it reacts differently.
It's a little bit more watery and its lighter.
So here I'm trying to blow this dry because
I want to finish this quick value study
rather quickly.
So I blow this dry, so we got the middle value
and the light value.
So I'm taking the smaller brush.
So usually the samller brush holds
a little bit less water so its better
for mixing a darker consistency.
I just grabbed the paint from the well
and then without going back too much water
and I'm just using the moisture I have
on my brush.
If I need to use a little big of water,
it's to revive the dry paint there,
because when I squeeze out the paint,
I don't use it up and I just leave it dry,
so adding a little bit of water will
revive the paint for me to use.
So I'm just painting the dark shape.
So again this is a very good way to practice
you value and also you mixture and consistency
because you don't need to worry about any color.
This is just one single color,
I'm using Cobalt Black from Mission Gold.
And I just need to worry about the value
and the mixture consistency.
And again the value is very simple too,
I am just breaking it down to two to three values.
So all you really need to focus is
you mixture consistency and the value
you are trying to mix.
And they goes hand in hand too,
the more watery you mixture is the lighter it is
and the more thicker, drier mixture you do,
the darker it is going to be.
So it is a very very good exercise.
So now with two values, you start to see
a little bit of form in the rock
and as well as the lighting.
So now I am using an even darker mixture
because there's some subtle dark
that can separate the rock and the reflection
and some other dark details.
So this is very rough,
I finished the whole thing in about 10 to 15 minutes.
So this is a very rough painting,
but also a very nice study.
I actually like the end quite well.
So I preserved the light on the left of the rock,
and just paint some more darker shades.
But because this is a drier mixture,
it's not going to explode and create cauliflower edges.
It's just going to create some soft shape
within the wet wash.
So now that I'm starting to get into it
I start to work on the details
just a little bit more.
But I have quite a lit of fun whenever
I'm doing value study because
it is very very simple and it is just fun
to play with your brush and
trying to mix different mixtures and value.
So here is the finished painting.
Again very simple, but I believe
this is a great exercise for you to practice
your mixing consistency.
After you are familiar with mixing
different values and consistencies,
you can then move into color,
and don't start with 15 to 20 colors.
Start with just three to four colors
like I showed you on last week's video.
Okay I hope you liked this week's Tip Tuesday.
Please like and subscribe if you like my content.
I am Eric from Cafe Watercolor,
see you next time.