May Week Two: Watercolours

Watercolours or Water-soluables are one of my favourite supplies for journalling because they dry quick and are easy to write and draw over with most pencils and pens.

Here are some different types of water-soluble media:

Watercolour paints in tubes, they have a similar consistency to heavy body acrylics

Watercolour paints in pans that you activate with water

Liquid watercolours are really concentrated and come in bottles, usually with a dropper

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Watercolour pencils are very versatile

Water soluble crayons (these may also be labelled as water soluble pastels)

Chalk pastels can be blended dry or wet

Gel pastels (the most well known are the Faber Castell Gelatos), look and feel like a lipstick

Gouache paint is opaque watercolour

 

Derwent Inktense are water activated, but permanent when dry.

You can use them in a number of fun techniques:

Watercolour Background
Yes, this is card tutorial, but the technique is exactly the same no matter what size your piece of watercolour paper is, and the instructor explains what she is doing and why really clearly:

Remember our lesson from last month on avoiding the dreaded Muddy colours? The same principles apply here, so remember purple loves blue but not orange.

Another background technique. This produces a pretty, soft background by combining water-soluble crayons and gesso:

Remember that just because the video shows watercolour crayons being used, doesn't mean you can't substitute other water-soluble medias. 

Want to paint an actual picture in watercolour? Try this pretty hummingbird, she makes it looks way easy:

GOUACHE (rhymes with SQUASH)
In this video, artist Jennibellie paints a picture using gouache.

 

I put this in this week's lesson as a bit of an extra because it includes a mini-tutorial on mixing a skin tone and also because Jennibellie is an awesome art journaller and recycle artist. If you are at all interested in making your own journals and art journalling on the cheap, I recommend you have a look at Jennibellie's YouTube Channel. I love her cereal box art journal tutorials in particular.

Happy Arting!
See you next week.