Adding on: If you can use layers, do it. Even if the layers are simply cloning your progress on another layer so if you mess up you can go back in time. However, a cool thing about doing stuff on one layer is color mixing. If you aren’t trying to mix colors, then don’t worry too much about it. I haven’t been making much art, but I wanted to offer some help.
I used to do stuff mostly on one layer. 1) I didn’t (and still don’t really) understand layers that do anything other than separating parts of the art or are anything other than Normal or Multiply. 2) I did traditional art first and I was mimicking acrylic and watercolor painting when I moved to digital. SO, if this is something you want to pursue, I recommend looking up and maybe trying traditional art so you can translate it into digital.
I didn’t watch all of these all the way through, but I skipped around and they should be cool. I literally went on YouTube and searched ‘watercolor painting’ and ‘oil painting’ and stuff like that. Some artists will explain what they’re doing, how, and why. This is awesome. Some artists will paint without saying much, but you can still learn a lot just by watching. YouTube has a lot of awesome artists with helpful videos.
OIL PAINTING TIPS || The Mind of an Artist #9 This person uses a sketch, but no underpainting. An underpainting can add extra colors while you work. Don’t worry about it, though. It’s not required, but it can peek through in areas where you would have had white spots, and it can influence how you see colors and thus which colors you choose. Also, he starts with dark colors. As a water color person and also someone whose acrylic yellow at school was NEVER OPAQUE, I wouldn’t normally start super dark. I’d either start light and layer over and over and slowly get darker, or if I was using something opaque I’d block in colors before doing detail and smoother blending over it. With acrylic, sometimes I would do the background first. Sometimes I would do the focus (like the person), do the background, and then go back and add more to the person so it wouldn’t look like the background was overlapping them. It’s hard to erase real paint, but it can be done!
GETTING STARTED WITH OILS Notice how this person and the first person are BOTH using oils and are using them very differently! See the washed out painting she does first? That’s a sort of underpainting. It’s good for mapping out colors. You can do it like this, or you can do it in monochrome, which would be focused more on getting the values. I used to do monochrome first ‘cause I was lazy and just sketching with paint, then I would go over it with colored washes, THEN blocked in colors, THEN finalize some stuff, then REFINALIZE ‘CAUSE IT DIDN’T LOOK RIGHT… Mod Wackart is completely right about single-layer work easily becoming a huge chore. Go for it, but be mindful! Don’t get frustrated!
Oil Painting Time Lapse | Floating In Sunset Waters This person does a monochrome underpainting and uses a grid to help with proportions. Notice how she blocks stuff in and does basic blending without focusing on details yet. In traditional art, you want to get a lot out before you do details, because as the piece evolves, you may have to redo stuff.
Acrylic VS Oil Side by Side EXPERIMENT I’ve never used oils, but this is a good way to see how different media will look and feel different. When you do digital work, you may be trying to mimic certain media or the digital tools may be mimicking one you aren’t going for, so keep an eye on the range and limitations. Acrylic can dry within minutes, while oil may take days. I used to add water to my acrylics to make them easier to blend and keep them wet longer, but too much and they become washed out like watercolors! I did that on purpose once. I watered down acrylics and mixed them with clear gel gloss paint and made an acrylic painting LOOK like watercolor. ALso, once my classmate put too much water and then tried to dry acrylics with a hairdryer. Acrylics are plastic-based. The paint started to bubble and then separated and she peeled the whole face off the portrait. The whole face had to be redone. Goodbye, 90 minutes of work!
Rainy City - Oil Painting in Real Time - Palette Knife | Brush Canvas Cars Wet Street Walk Dusan This person’s piece is more abstract. Your art doesn’t need to look like a photograph. It can be stylized, even if it’s to the point of someone having to walk 15 feet away to see what it is, or even if it is so abstracted there isn’t an ‘object’ to see, but shapes and colors to interpret as symbols. A big thing that stands out to me with this piece is brush/knife strokes. See how they aren’t all going one way? It can break shapes up and communicate FORM.
Watercolor painting for beginners beautiful Tree and barren land Watercolor! See the underpainting/background they did first? Those are washes. It’s a good way to get your brain thinking about colors early on, and thin layers of paint over top will allow these colors to show through. Some watercolor paints are more opaque than others. I used to use Grumbacher’s opaque set. Watercolor has a very ‘back to front’ way of working. You can layer more and more, but it’s VERY HARD to fix watercolor if you go too dark or make a mistake. The white paint never matches the white of your paper! Grumbacher’s white had a slight blue-ness to it, while the paper was slightly yellow. I almost never used the white. It would look too out of place.
QUIET -Watercolor painting- It’s okay to have a lineart! In watercolor, you can do the lineart and then paint over it. You might need to redo parts of it if your watercolors are pretty opaque, but that depends on how you like the look of it. You might like it more washed out instead. You can keep your lines on a separate layer on your computer. :) Notice that this person used brown instead of black for the lines. It’s less intense and warmer. It also blends more easily with organics/skin. Also notice how this person does colored washes. LOOK AT THE LAYERS… LOOK AT HOW THE WATER DOES SO MUCH OF THE MIXING FOR THE ARTIST… I can’t do this in digital art yet and it BOTHERS ME. I’m sure there are brushes I’m too derpy to understand.
watercolour painting at a coffee shop // process + review A more blotchy style. Just because a medium can be smooth, doesn’t mean it has to be. Just because it can be rough, doesn’t mean it has to be! Experiment and test the limits. Sometimes you can come up with new stuff by trying to make something do something it wasn’t designed for.
HOW TO PAINT FACES WITH WATERCOLOR // Tutorial + Q&A Notice how this one uses the sketch as part of the finished work and then builds off it instead of fighting it or hiding it. It’s not ‘look at my sketch peeking through to be artsy,’ which is a totally legit thing to do, but the pencil work is part of the FINISHED LOOK. He also adds lines with the edges of the watercolors he lays down as well as other media. Breaking up shapes can add a lot of life and movement. God, he trusts that water and pigment so much.
speed painting - our endless abnegation That last artist’s work also reminded me of this- I watched this back in college. 2011 feels so far away. Make a mess! Play with it! Don’t like it? Whatever, mess with it some more or walk away from it for a bit.
And speaking of art tutorials…
Bob Ross - Sunset Aglow (Season 26 Episode 12) He’s another back-to-front painter. Why paint the sky around leaves when you can paint the sky and then put the leaves on top where they’re supposed to be? Why paint individual leaves when the BRUSH WILL PAINT THEM FOR YOU?
“But now… This squirrel’s big enough, he knocks on the door and comes on in.” Thank you, Mr. Ross.
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