Quick 'n easy Passepartout cutting...

Everybody who paints watercolours knows that you usually frame them  behind glass,and that the painting looks better and deeper with a passepartout / mount / mat around it.

You can buy standard size passepartouts, but often they just do not fit your watercolour. Unfortunately cutting the perfect passepartout from beautiful thick carton under 45° angle just isn't an easy job - and if you want to express yourself in a painting on stretched paper you don't want to stay within exact dimensions...

The method of passepartout-cutting I'm suggesting here is easy, fast - and can be used as stand-alone or underneath a standard mount...

Needed: a piece of thick-ish paper (>=150 gr), a ruler, a pencil, a rubber, sellotape and a good sharp cutter.

1. Take the correct measurements inside the image:

2. Draw the outline on the paper you are going to cut the mount from:

3. Stick a piece of sellotape over the crossing lines:

4. With your knife, cut a diagonal out of all 4 corners:

5. Cut out a smaller rectangle or square:

6. Carefully fold the 4 parts:

7. Turn your passepartout around, to check if all is perfect, turn back and stick your image to it – done!

How to's: Covering a part of your watercolour

Do you like this painting? It a a typical watercolour, with spontaneous, flowing, transparent colours. A simple, graphic image. Would be super as decoration on a white wall.
And believe me, it is easy to make, also for starters, if you follow these guidelines:

Make an outline drawing, of a simple subject.

Cover everything that needs to stay white! This is masking fluid...

Make sure it is a solid layer, with no gaps

The larger surfaces can be covered with masking tape and paper

Let the masking fluid dry completely before you start painting! 

Prepare your paint, carefully choose your colours - and make them strong

Put a wet-in-wet layer of a nice colour mix on the work. 

You can throw the paint, mix, do everything you like, you don't have to be neat or careful...

Let dry...

And then remove the paper, the tape and the masking fluid, to check out the result!

How to's: paint short frizzy hair in Aquarelle - an experiment

Painting a portrait in aquarelle watercolours is pretty hard. There is so much risk with things going wrong, that's why it is important to have a good attitude towards it:first of all, realise that you may have to tear up your work and start over, and secondly, try out the important parts on the same type of paper that you are going to create the painting on. One of the (many) important parts of a portrait is 'Hair'. There's blond hair and dark hair and everything in between, there is short and long hair, straight and curly... It takes some study to get 'em all under control... And the one I had never really practiced before was 'short frizzy hair', most seen on black children - and on Pim :°).

Try-out 1. Wet-in-wet, start with the colours of face and skull. Then on top of that, while still wet, very dark dots (I used a mix of sepia + payne's grey) then let dry, then background. 

Make sure you prepare! You need to know what you are going to do,  make enough paint, decide on colours. Don't draw at all or just some thin help lines...

Try-out 2. on wet surface, the skin and skull colours, leaving out highlights. Then very dark paint approx where the hair is, then add salt. For me this doesn't really do it, but I'm sure others like Cathie could make it work!

Also working well for me is to experiment on one page, divided in 4 or 6 parts using masking tape. That way you have only a small surface to fill each time - and you don't ruin too much of your expensive watercolour paper!

 Try-out 3. just the hair, to see if I could get it darker as the salt takes out the 'dark' as well. So this one sure stayed dark but I considered it a fail as it doesn't look one bit like curly hair...Yet in the right context I might get away with it!

 Try-out 4: Another fail, the difference with nr3 is that I wetted the paper first. This might actually work for suggesting fur, or sheepskin, so it was useful as experiment...

Try-out 5: Wet the paper with clear water, then dot the hair in darker and lighter (more and less pigment) shades. Let dry, then add the skin colour and shadows. Then the background - which can also make the impression of short curls stronger. This method worked the best for me...

 Try-out 6: Same as number 5, but now with a part of the face of an African boy. That helps!

Conclusion: The suggestion of curly hair is more important than the details. It looks right if the rest of the painting is clear - the brain will automatically 'connect the dots' because of the context... A background that leaves out the curly shapes helps explain your picture.

The technique you use is personal, I prefer the wet-in-wet, but I'm sure that good results can be achieved with salt, or by painting all curls seperately with a one-hair-brush. And always keep an eye on the light, make sure your shadows are consistent and don't be afraid of a bit of contrast!

Soon we will spend more time on portraits in aquarelle!!

The veins of a leaf - an exercise in 'leaving out the white'

Not-painting when you need white in watercolour is one of the typical parts of the technique: your white is the colour of the paper... With the aquarellista starter group we worked on a very simple exercise, "leaving white" the veins of a leaf in 3 different ways: 

 The Linda method*: draw the veins lightly with pencil, paint outside the pencil lines, let dry, rub out the pencil and there are your delicate white lines...

 The Masking Method: draw the lines with masking fluid (mix with a little bit of water for more fluidity and thus thinner lines) let dry, add paint, let dry again, rub off masking...

 Lifting method:  first paint the leaf, let dry, then lift the paint by wetting your brush with clear water, draw the veins with clear water, then dry the brush and lift out the paint. The veins will never be completely white, but the effect is very poetic!

*named after Linda Nulens who came up with the idea to draw with pencil then  rub out: it makes creating fine lines so much easier!

Linda, Carol and Sylvie tried it out, and are now done with the basic exercises!

 

Carol worked on an extra one, to which she added a background using salt. Very decorative!

Also by Carol: Stonehenge. So well done, very simple and quiet. I absolutely love it. 

 Sue's Christmas wreath one step further. She used the starters exercise for the blue leaves and don't they look fab'n crispy!!

 Elia has worked on another version of her wave.The grey lines are masking fluid - they will be the lightest colour of the painting...

For some exciting Circus-paintings, go to our Hangar News blog