Easy Watercolor Painting

Easy Watercolor Painting

Two-color Portrait by Natalie Richy

In this video lesson, you will discover how to make a portrait artwork using just two watercolor pigments.

Here is the finished portrait that Natalie will achieve by the end of this video lesson.

This watercolor sketch was done as a preliminary study for the larger painting in oil. The portrait was painted in the style of the Old Masters, using the multilayer oil painting technique.

If you would like to learn how to paint like the Old Masters, but using modern materials, you will greatly benefit from studying the Old Masters Academy online video course.

To make the portrait in watercolor, Natalie first transfers the drawing onto the clean watercolor paper sheet, using the tracing paper. How to do this is fully explained in multiple video lessons of the Watercolor Academy course. The watercolor underpainting for the portrait in pencil will be done in just two pigments. To decide on the colors, you may wish to test different watercolor paints and check their combinations with each other. To do so, make a color swatch, applying paint in a gradated rectangle, and then add another paint next to the previous one, to see how this pair looks together. Don't forget to write down paint names for your reference.

After testing Indian Gold with sepia, Natalie also checks how this yellow color works with a Neutral tint from Windsor & Newton, as well as several other paints, including Payne's gray and indigo. When the paper surface is dry, Natalie also tests how different colored pencils appear with the chosen colors. All of this shapes her decision as to which watercolor pigment to use, and which color of pencil to go for. It's now time to prepare the chosen watercolor pigments for painting, which are Indian gold and sepia. Painting will be done wet-into-wet, and to prepare the watercolor paper sheet for the color wash, Natalie first wets the entire sheet on its backside using a flat white brush. When the sheet is thoroughly soaked, it is flipped over and placed on the plastic board. The wet paper surface sticks to the board nicely, keeping it firmly in place. Clean water is now applied onto the face side of the watercolor paper sheet. This is high quality 100% cotton paper, which has a 300gsm weight and a rough paper surface. After allowing the water to soak in for several minutes, Natalie now mixes the paint and applies it in loose freehand brushstrokes on the wet paper surface. Painting wet-into-wet gives nice soft edges to brushstrokes, which is exactly what is required for this underpainting.

A darker brown sepia pigment is added onto the yellow area, intermixing two pigments directly onto the paper surface. When the watercolor paper dries, these two colors will look lighter, because under gravity, pigment particles sink into the paper fibers, while the paint is drying. Natalie is working in very free and loose brushstrokes, because it is not about the drawing at this step, but the colors and tones. A light background is painted with a flat wide synthetic brush, which covers big areas rapidly. Two pigments are first mixed on the palette and then applied onto the paper with a brush. The darker tonal values are built up by adding more sepia pigment with a big round mop brush. To achieve a smoother gradation of colors, you can pick up the board and rotate it at various angles, for wet paint to flow in different directions. You may see that the face is left unpainted, because the portrait will be done in a colored pencil. Now that the watercolor underplanting is fully dry, it is time to decide on the pencil color. We do not insist on you purchasing any specific art materials, including colored pencils. This would be imposing our personal preferences, which may not suit your creative style, or simply be unavailable in your local art shops. For the purpose of such mixed media artwork, you don't have to use a specific pencil – instead, you can choose any drawing material you like. You can make a portrait on the prepared background in chalk or charcoal, use graphite pencil, draw in pen and ink, use a permanent or spirit marker, or use any drawing medium you like. It is not about any specific art materials, but skills. A professional artist will make a much better portrait than a beginner, not because of a red pencil, but because such an artist knows how to draw portraits.

One video will not be enough to explain everything you need to know about drawing portraits. Such ability depends on many skills, including:

• How to use constructive drawing principles
• How to use the knowledge of human anatomy in drawing
• How to believably depict planes of a human head
• How to apply proportions and alignments of facial features
• How to realistically render tonal values
• and so on

One video lesson simply would not fit all of this information. Instead, we created a whole art course for artists who hope to learn how to draw figures and portraits from life, memory and imagination. You may wish to check out the Life Drawing Academy, which comes with two courses - Online and a Correspondence Course - and teaches all that you need to know about drawing portraits and figures. The online course is suitable for intermediate artists who already have some constructive drawing skills and would like to further improve their figurative drawing, by watching 52 video lessons on these topics. However, the best option, which is fully suitable for complete beginners, is the Life Drawing Academy Correspondence Course, where you will receive personal guidance from the Academy tutors according to the custom-made curriculum. Such a curriculum will be designed just for you, depending on your current level of drawing skills, and taking into account the art education goals you would like to achieve. This academy is truly unique – such tutoring is not available anywhere else.

Of course, in order to draw realistic portraits, you also need to have an artist's knowledge of anatomy. Learning the anatomy may be a rather daunting task. However, there is one great art course where you can do this in a fast and easy way: Anatomy Master Class is a unique online course that was designed for students like you, who don't have much time for learning. It comes with 26 video lessons that you can watch at any time in the comfort of your home, learning everything you need to know in order to draw figures and portraits with the correct anatomy.

Your figurative drawing skills do not depend only on the knowledge of anatomy. Above all, you need to have a good understanding of fundamental drawing principles like linear and aerial perspective, constructive drawing, rules of composition, proficient tonal rendering techniques, golden proportions and much more. Such info is provided in the Drawing Academy online course. This course has 45 video lessons that are suitable for both beginners and advanced students who like to improve their overall drawing skills.

If you already have good drawing skills and a necessary knowledge of anatomy, and would only like to learn the know-how of drawing a portrait in a three-quarter view, you will find the book by Vladimir London "How to Paint a Portrait" particularly helpful. It comes with an in-depth description and multiple illustrations guiding you how to draw a portrait step-by-step. This book is available on Amazon in both digital and paper formats.

The portrait drawing by Natalie Richy is coming along nicely. You can see that using mixed media is a great way to make an artwork. Even if you have never done a portrait in watercolor before, you can still use watercolor paints to make a very picturesque background, and then draw a beautiful portrait in pencil or in any drawing material of your choice, on top of such background.

Using a very limited color palette of only two pigments makes it much easier to work with colors. Even if you do not apply watercolor paints with precision, this would not spoil such an artwork. Instead, it may only make it more picturesque. I hope that you see the benefit of using such a limited color palette, and that you have gained an inspiration of how to apply it to your creative projects...

To learn more about watercolor painting, enroll now