Hey guys this week we are focusing on watercolor this is going to be a
two-part tutorial this week we'll start with all the supplies that you need to
be successful with watercolor painting and then a few weeks from now I'm going
to produce a techniques watercolor video so look out for that one and make sure
you watch until the end of today's tutorial because there is a super
giveaway this is an awesome prize pack especially if you're a watercolor artist
or getting started in watercolor so watch to the end of the video for
that
Guys I just want to take a sec to say thank you to everyone who's supporting
me on patreon you guys are awesome and this week because we're doing watercolor
supplies I've released a whole pack of watercolor clipart it's hand painted by
me flowers leaves everything you need to create beautiful watercolor inspired
blog headers landing pages you can use this for your social media graphics so
go get that now it's all available for a $2 donation on my patreon site so I'm
going to start today's video with what I think is the most important of
watercolor painting supplies and that is watercolor paper now even if you're
painting with watercolor paints that you made out of kool-aid or coffee or I
don't know whatever you still want good quality watercolor paper because part of
the painting process is really all about how the paint absorbs into that paper
and as we all know thin paper like computer paper buckles when it gets wet
and that's what you really don't want so we're gonna have a long talk of a good
watercolor paper now I just received these beautiful
pads of watercolor paper from Canson there are a hundred percent cotton and
we'll talk about what that means and I have one to give away as part of our
prize pack for today so make sure you watch till the end of today's tutorial
for the giveaway okay so there's a lot of info out there about paper but it
doesn't need to be confusing and everything you need to know about the
paper that you're buying is contained right here on the front cover so we're
gonna sort of go through this label and demystify it so first of all what's easy
okay twelve sheets we know what that means we've got twelve pieces of paper
this one is ten by fourteen inches I do like to typically by larger pads of
paper because if it's ten by fourteen or
nine by twelve I can still cut it in half and get two useable sheets they're
four different pieces of works that's why I usually buy large and next piece
of information it says a hundred percent cotton and that means that this paper is
artist quality so paper that is pH neutral acid-free and 100 percent cotton
it's not going to deteriorate or yellow over time the way an old newspaper does
and that's important if you're selling your work so you know if you're just
painting and scanning it into the computer and making clipart or you're
just practicing you can purchase student quality paper that does contain acid and
you don't need to worry about it and you can save the money but if you're making
work that you want to hold on to that you want to pass down that you want to
sell even if you're producing prints so you're printing your work out onto
watercolor paper and you need to make sure that it's a hundred percent cotton
and so that time won't cause any trouble next piece of info 300 grams per meter
squared or a hundred and forty pound we have the weight of the paper and that
will always be listed on the front and GSM means gram per meter squared and
pounds means pounds per ream of paper so 140 pound is a pretty typical weight and
it's the one that I paint with often typically you're gonna see these four
weights ninety pounds or 190 GSM that's a really thin it's good for making
prints 140 pounds is a good weight I think it's recommended that you do
still stretch 140 pound paper and I have a video all about that that I'll link in
the description next would be 260 pound most people
would say at that point it's not as necessary to stretch your paper now it's
gonna cost you more but it's sort of nice you can skip that step and then 300
pound being typically the most commercially produced or machine
produced heaviest paper and it's very thick and dense I use 140 pound because
it's so available being one of the machine produced weights and being on
the lighter and it's gonna be a good price point and since I'm not doing
landscapes or something where I'm putting tons of color on there and doing
lots of washes I think I think I can get away without stretching it but I guess
that's a personal choice we'll call it okay and then last thing probably the
most important is this word right in the middle and that is rough and there are
three types of watercolor paper there's rough paper cold pressed and hot pressed
and those words refer to the type of surface that you're going to be painting
on now rough paper such as this has a prominent tooth and a textured surface
when you paint on it you're going to sort of get a grainy effect and you'll
get a nice pooling of the paint rough paper is good for wet on wet and it's
also good for building up washes of color it can absorb a lot of paint and
it's nice for dry brushing because of that texture if you want to do clouds or
trees you can dry brush and you can pick up that texture and use it to your
advantage one sort of drawback I guess would be that it can be hard to control
those small delicate brush strokes because the surface is so toothy so just
something to think about next we have hot pressed paper and hot
pressed is at the other end of the spectrum it has a fine grain and a
smooth surface it's not very good for building up multiple washes and colors
because very little pigment gets beyond the surface of the paper the paper sort
of gets overloaded and that has to do with how much pressure is applied in the
making of the paper and how close the cotton fibers are so you can see here on
this hot pressed paper the painting is a little bit flat the paint doesn't have
anywhere to go but on a rough paper the paint and water can seep down in between
those cotton fibers which are farther apart so it's better for ink pen and ink
for gouache and I don't use it very often because it can be hard to build up
nice amounts of color and you certainly don't get that beautiful watercolor
texture that you desire now the one positive here is that it's really nice
for scanning into a computer so if you're doing a lot of watercolor that
you want to use online say for your blog header using a hot pressed paper means
that you're not picking up all that shadowy texture in your scanner when you
go to use this as a graphic so that's something to think about but then again
you don't get the beautiful watercolor look so this one I'd consider it much
much better for pen and ink okay and then in the middle we have our
Goldilocks paper and that is cold pressed and it
is in between rough and hot pressed so you get a nice textured paper that's not
overly rough so it's good for doing small detail but it's also good for
doing washes and building up color it's the choice of many artists because it is
the best of both worlds and it's truly my favorite paper and the one that
you'll see me use over and over again on the channel the last thing you want to
consider when it comes to paper is do you want to stretch your paper it's
always a good idea to do so I'm a very lazy artist and I rarely do that but
there is one product that can help with that and that is a watercolor paper
block it's a really cool product and I have a couple here from Canson all the
sheets are stuck together to form a block and this is good for plein air
painting or when you're outdoors or on the go you can do your painting and then
you take a little exacto knife once it's dry and then you carefully cut out or
cut off that top sheet and peel it off and this will keep your your paper
fairly stretched while you're painting okay next we're going to talk about
watercolor paints now there's a lot of wonderful things about watercolors
they're fun to use they're non-toxic they're easy cleanup and of course they
mix with water which makes them beautifully translucent and very fluid
and that fluidity well and same with the translucency actually those two
attributes can make watercolor your most hated medium and for a long time I
absolutely hated watercolor first of all that translucent nature it makes it
really hard to cover up a mistake and the fluidity it means that, that paint is
liable to get away from you and you're always not quite in control of the paint
but as I get older that's what I've really come to love about watercolor is
that, that fluidity I have to enjoy the process and it's not
about always getting it right so now that's actually one of my
favorite things about this medium now there are three different types of
watercolor paints there are water colored tubes pans or disks and liquid
watercolors and there's no one type that's better than another all of them
can be purchased in artist quality or student quality or craft quality but
it's really just about choosing the one that's right for you
maybe you really love discs but then you prefer tubes when you're doing
large-scale pieces you know so all of them I think are quite equal you simply
need to decide which type is best for you and then you need to decide which
quality you're willing to pay for if you're selling your work go with artist
quality if you're practicing stick to student quality to save money and when
you're talking about artist quality you're really talking about the quality
of the pigment so watercolors are made up of finely ground pigment and that
pigment is what color's the paint and then there's other ingredients in there
and we're not going to get too detailed but there's you know something to bind
the paint there's something to moisturize it so it doesn't get dry and
gross and there might be something to help facilitate the flow of the paint
but it's really all about the quality of that pigment and a good quality pigment
means that the paint will have a nice vibrancy of color my trueness of color
and also a longevity of color so you want when you're buying artists paint
and you're spending that extra money for those paints to last on the page and
stay true over the years of course if you're just practicing and you're
getting to know this medium you're not gonna want to spend the money on artist
quality paint so hunt around for something that is a good price and has a
good pigment as well say something like this praying watercolor set part of the
problem you're gonna have is just simply that the colors are so washed out you're
not going to be able to get a real vibrancy of color but it doesn't mean
you can't make something nice them and I use this prank set to do a
wreath and it's one of my most popular videos and I will link that in the
description below as well and if you're a fan of the channel you know that
probably you can guess my favorite type and that is the pans or the discs the
reason I like them is because I find them really easy to get started with you
can sort of jump right in when you're painting with discs a lot of them come
with a palette in the lid the Sakura set does and I just mines in the kitchen in
the sink or something but that makes it really easy you can just get your water
and start mixing tubes are really nice because they you can mix up large
quantities of a color so if you're trying to mix a certain shade of blue
that doesn't come in your set it could be a hard to mix up enough of that blue
to do a whole 20 by 30 piece say you're trying to do a sky wash but when you're
working with a tube that's gonna be much easier isn't it because you can mix up a
large amount and then the nice thing about the liquid colors is that they are
very very vibrant so you can get an extremely vibrant color and they're
actually dye based so they will stain the page and they're wonderful for doing
illustration work especially okay and when it comes to paint brushes
specifically for water color again this is a big subject I could probably do a
whole video just on this but I just want to give you enough information that you
can make informed choices and you're not just sort of bogged down with info so
what should a brush do well a good brush a successful paint brush should hold a
good amount of paint and water sort of in its belly
so above the tip you want to have paint in your brush a good brush should have a
nice delicate fine point whether it's around or flat it should have a nice
fine tip and finally a good brush will allow your paint to flow onto the page
in an easy smooth fluid motion so that's sort of what you're wanting out of your
brush and then brushes if there's three things you're going to think about when
you're shopping for a brush and the first is the type so the type of hair
the size and the shape now when it comes to different types of brush bristle hair
there are animal hairs so I think gosh okay it's pig and ox and squirrel are
quite common and and goat so you'll see a lot of those and I'm pretty sure this
is the hog hair brush the the light-colored ones
I'm not into using animal brushes very often I just find they're not for me and
I know a lot of people also prefer you know a man-made / animal made and I
totally get that as well so I'm not usually using these kind of brushes
I prefer synthetic bristles and synthetic bristles are usually made from
nylon or polyester and well some of the typical animal hair brushes like hog
hair brushes will be really cheap there are very expensive sought-after animal
brushes that are much more expensive and the synthetic brushes are meant to mimic
those really high quality ones so for my purposes I really like the nylon
bristles and so once you've chosen what type of bristle you're going to go for
it you need to think about the size of the brush and this often just comes down
to well what size is your project so if you're doing a lot of 4 by 6
cards you're going to be using you know fairly small brushes and these are sort
of the brushes that I employ constantly this is a number 10 and a 12 so I'm
using these all the time there so I'm not too big and not too small to compare
this is I think the one in the three and then this would be more like a twenty
and this is good for larger work so these are my go-to brushes nylon
bristles everything from sort of 1 up to 20 although you don't need them all just
you know a selection and then the last thing you're gonna think about is the
shape and there are many different brush shapes and there are many different ways
to use each shape and you know the why you would use a flat brush here or
versus a round brush we're not going to get into any of that I'm
basically gonna say that for most of what I do I like a round brush and it's
important to have a round brush with a nice fine tip so that comes to a nice
fine point or a nice round brush with a fine point will hold lots of paint in
its belly and then you'll be able to get these beautiful fine
delicate lines as you paint because it has the brush has a good tip so that is
what I'm going to say about brushes think about the size that you need
what kind of bristle I like nylon or synthetic and the shape and I think a
lot of watercolor artists would agree with me on this if you just get a
selection of round brushes with a good fine tip it's gonna be a really good
start and of course all of the supplies that we've used in today's tutorial are
linked in the description below so check the video description for the Amazon
links to all of these products and more of my favorites thanks for watching
today guys I hope you'll check out some of the other watercolour tutorials and
look out in a couple weeks for the watercolor techniques video but right
now you should go enter the giveaway because this is a super prize pack there
is some gorgeous thick 140 pound water colored paper from Canson as well as a
watercolor field set the 30 pan from Sakura complete with a palette and a
water brush so check the video description for a link that will let you
into the giveaway and from there there's tons of different ways to enter so we
hope that it'll be fair for everybody tons of ways to enter this giveaway and
international entries are welcome thanks for watching and I'll see you next week