Watercolors

Becca Hillburn

I'm a childrens comic artist and freelance illustrator originally from New Orleans but currently living in Nashville, TN. I graduated from SCAD with a Masters Degree in Sequential Art in 2013, and from the University of New Orleans with a bachelors degree in Hypermedia (digital art). My main focus is currently watercolor comics, and my hobbies include writing for my blog, Keep on Truckin' Nattosoup and attending conventions as an artist.

Heidi Black

Heidi is a sequential artist and illustrator from dayton, ohio. She likes cats and potatoes and hates writing bios. Her work is at electricabyss.com, including her tutorial artbook, Electricabyss, and her newest comic, Sons of Fire.

materialsBrushes!

Paper!

Gator board!Tape!

Paint!

Patience!

Water!Paper towels!

Pencil!

Gouache!

Palette!

papersFluid watercolor paper: cheap, bound on two sides, very convenient

Arches watercolor blocks: bound on all sides, rough texture, expensive. Made of cotton

Arches watercolor paper: needs to be stretched, not bound on all sides

Canson montval: 7” kara painted on these

Blick studio: children's illustrations

Watercolors can also be painted on bristol, wet media boards, illustration board, or other thick papers

140 lb is standard for watercolor paper. 300Lb is heavyweight

Paints (tubes & pans)Tubes can be squeezed into pans and dried out (both of us do this)

Brands we like: holbein, yarka, soho, winsor-newton, shin-han, Sennelier, blick, da vinci, marie's,

Okay-ish brands: grumbacher, “student” brands (cotman), sakura koi

Avoid: reeves!!!!!!!!! anything in a multi-material set, anything marked “non-toxic,” anything marketed towards kids, anything with the word “value”

Paints (liquid watercolors)What in the world are these?

Artificial pigments, super bright, low light-fastness

More permanent than watercolors – act more like stains or inks

Swatch Test colors (for future reference)

Watercolor pencilsNot as bad as you think

Good brands: derwent inktense, caran d'ache

Okay brands: derwent

Lets avoid these, shall we: prismacolor, staedler, crayola

brushesDifferent shapes for different uses: flat, filbert, round, mop, liner, fan, other specialty shapes

Come in a variety of fibers: sable hair, squirrel, kolinsky sable, goat, boar, horse, synthetic

Good brands: utrecht, blick, creative mark rhapsody, winsor-newton, da vinci, escoda, princeton

Avoid: value brands, student brands, hobby brushes

Also available: water brushes

Color theoryPrimary colors: red, yellow, blue.

More mixable colors: cyan, magenta, yellow, black

A good set of 12 basic colors: paynes grey, yellow ochre, burnt sienna, burnt umber, warm and cool red, warm and cool blue, lemon yellow, sap green, viridian, lamp black

Color theoryMix complimentary colors (opposites) to get more interesting shadow colors

Using mixes rather than pure colors makes interesting colors and cool separations

Pure colors versus mixes (right)

Left: orange and burnt siennaShaded with violet and blue.

Color theoryUse washes of the same color to build depth

Color theoryUse the same color for shadows throughout to create unity

techniquesGraphite transfer

Stretching paper

Washes

Brush techniques (wet/wet, wet/dry, dry/wet dry/dry)

Dropping

Multi-material techniques (wax resist, masking, salt, alcohol)

Overworking (no! Bad!)

Corrections (scrubbing, gouache)

Demo time!