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View Full Version : A Watercolour Daily Carry...?



John the Monkey
May 31st, 2012, 06:22 AM
Well, not quite, as I don't cart these around with me everywhere. Yet.

http://getfile5.posterous.com/getfile/files.posterous.com/temp-2012-06-01/mHkzohckslzHrlkvHGxpaaeGibEDCxpiikmahFuxGHgCIebrJy vjAxfEsvfa/IMG_0047.JPG.scaled1000.jpg

The white box is a Winsor & Newton "Cotman" watercolour "Sketchers" box. It's on top of a Moleskine pocket reporter notebook, to give an idea of the size. I picked mine up in a sale for £7.99 (US Amazon seems to have them for $9).

http://getfile1.posterous.com/getfile/files.posterous.com/temp-2012-06-01/jxAJevCDoslqrlwAgrcidteoxJGhaEwjbeJhjrildbjodrEbcm vgnfGBhInj/IMG_0048.JPG.scaled1000.jpg

Here's the open kit. There are 12 half pans of paint, and travel brush (the brush handle comes apart, and the front end of the brush tucks into the rear. Think of it as the Kaweco Sport of paint brushes). The brush is a bit too small for large washes (it doesn't hold much water at all) but works on a small scale, or for detail. I'm mostly working on A6 size paper (slightly larger than Moleskine "Pocket" size) and it's occasionally too small for that! If I was carrying this around a lot, I'd get a water brush (http://www.stutler.cc/other/sketchbook/waterbrush.html) to go with it. At the moment, I just use my ordinary brushes. (Incidentally, whilst you're at that site, have a look at the author's DIY compact sketch kits (http://www.stutler.cc/other/sketchbook/sketchbook_c_04.html), really nifty).

http://getfile9.posterous.com/getfile/files.posterous.com/temp-2012-06-01/EyipxImrClafABIEjuwEfoAakpmDuxfaoxfDowjdhwydgCjCwE mFwoyurHAf/IMG_0046.JPG.scaled1000.jpg

Here's the first thing I did with it (don't look too closely, it's very much better from a distance) colouring an old sketch of a character from Lawrence Block's Matt Scudder books. The paints mix nicely, and there's a good selection of colours in the box - I think I may swap one half pan for a black, or grey at some point.

PSmith
June 1st, 2012, 02:54 PM
Very nice watercolour sketch. I wish I could do something remotely resembling it.
Russ Stutler's site looks like a great resource for anyone interested in the subject.

KrazyIvan
June 1st, 2012, 11:18 PM
oooh. I wish I could do water colors. I can just make passable pencil sketches and go over them with a pen.

John the Monkey
June 2nd, 2012, 02:20 AM
Well, I don't show you the ones I throw in the bin :)

In my limited experience, the key is to work from light to dark, and test the wash/mix of colours frequently (that's the series of brushstrokes you see on the left of the page).

If you fancy it, give it a go - just make sure your ink lines are done with a pigment liner (I bought a Uni Pin for the purpose) or some sort of waterfast ink. Mr. Stutler uses drawing ink, if I remember the link properly, and I've known others use Platinum Carbon ink and Noodlers bulletproof inks. The latter do need time to bond to the paper, so you can't colour immediately. Watercolour pencils are slightly easier to start with, although they don't mix as nicely as "proper" watercolour (imo).

Someone once told me that painting was a process of "accepting a series of small defeats" - I keep that in mind as I work, and then it doesn't seem too bad when things go wrong (like poor old Joe's arm, above) :)