Tuesday, February 4, 2014

Quick Tips For Abstract Watercolor Painting Success

By Jayne Rutledge


If you want to explore your creativity and develop a new skill, then starting out with abstract watercolor painting is a fantastic idea. This style of art can be remarkably satisfying, soothing and stress-busting. However, there is real skill to this kind of painting, and knowing a few tips will help you to get good results faster.

Watercolors are a simple kind of paint to use since there is not too much technicality attached to mixing the colors or applying them. In order to prepare the liquid, all you need to do is to add a little water to the palette. While the technical aspect is simple, there is a great deal of skill to using them effectively on the canvas.

Once you have played around with how to mix the watercolors, it is time to put brush to paper. It often catches beginners by surprise to realize that this kind of paint always dries much lighter than it appears at first. Over time you will come to have a sense of what shade the wet color will dry to.

Even when you are working with darker hues, this style of painting remains quite translucent. While this can be a very attractive style, it also means that it is quite hard to disguise any errors in your work. You can go over the work again by re-wetting the piece, but this could affect the look of it. This is an aspect that you will need to play around with in order to get a feel for how you will deal with errors and re-workings.

There are a lot of artists who recommend planning out your piece carefully. Often the best way to do this is to produce a sketch of your planned artwork prior to working with the actual medium. This can help you to tweak the design and reduce the chance of errors, which are more difficult to undo when working with this style of painting.

Limiting the range of colors that you use is often recommended by long-time watercolor enthusiasts. When using more than around three hues in a piece, the effect can be busy and appear overcrowded. Limit your palette while you are a beginner and experiment with the effect before branching out further along the line.

Another key point about painting in this manner is that you need to have quality materials. Your brushes are most important as it can be very frustrating when your brush is dropping bristles on the canvas. If you need to economize, do it on the canvas or liquids, but never on the brushes.

Abstract watercolor painting is an excellent place to begin your exploration of this style of art. Through trial and error and experimentation, you can come up with some excellent results and begin to understand the subtleties of using this kind of medium. Be creative, use your imagination and you will begin to develop some good work and your own particular style.




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