French version/ Version française

Watercolours

Summary

*Tips for beginners

*Tips of the month

*Personal watercolours organized by themes

*Others artists highlighted

Tips for beginners

Water colour budget

How much do you need to start?

A. The smallest budget

1 black aquarelle pencil: the lines disappear with water
1 eraser and 1 pencil sharpener
1 pad of water colour paper, size 14 x 36 or thereabout (300g/m²)

Tubes of colour (5ml) Extra fine

1 yellow of a recognized brand (some brands are better than others) 
1 red
1 blue

Semi-synthetic brushes

1 round n° 2 and n° 6
1 flat square n° 4
1 wide flat n°8

N.B.: The numbers may vary from brand to brand.

Total: section A  47,50 euros

1 jar, honey pot style
Absorbing cotton rags or paper towels
White plate

B. The middle budget (to add to section A)

1 palette with compartments (white plastic)
Permanent pink
Manganese blue
Aureoline yellow

Total: sections A+B  59,95 euros

C. Top budget (to add to section A and B)

Hookers green
Cobalt blue
Prussian blue

Total: sections A+B+C  79,33 euros

Please note
The first three colours already enable you to get many combinations and therefore various shades.
With that material and those paints you can work about three years, having an average production.
To purchase the brushes it would be best to get advice from an experienced person who can help you chose the appropriate brands and the best quality. 

***

Tip of the month

Water, water, more water … always water.

Water is indeed the first and foremost necessary element to paint an aquarelle. The two major mistakes made in water colour are a) we do not dilute enough the pigments we use and b) we do not leave enough blank paper spaces thus allowing the white of the paper to act as a colour. 
By painting the highlights with hues that are too pronounced, by using too heavy and opaque pigments, we are obliged to force the shadows and therefore make our watercolour too dense and heavy looking. 

What do we need to do to have a nice transparent watercolour?

First and foremost, you need to know the characteristics of each paint you use.
Knowing the name of the hue is not sufficient, we need to know the individual characteristic proper to each of the paint. To help us the manufacturers have indexed and classified the colours. A table will detail to us the strengths and weaknesses of the various shades they are proposing. It is up to us to get informed about it and organize our paint box by placing the transparent and semi transparent paints together, then the tinting ones, the coating ones and then the opaque ones.
This way we have an easy reference and will find it easier to choose the ideal paint for our project. 
When using tubes, it is a bit more complicated to achieve, since they roll and move around the box. A box with compartments would be best suited to be able to have the tubes composing our palette organized by their characteristics. Unless we do organize the paints in such a way, we need to rely on our memory to remember the various characteristics of each paint, but….? Or you can also place a reference on each tube. 

Last tip

Snowy landscapes are particularly attractive. The watercolour, will as a matter of fact, use the white of the paper in many areas, giving strong light and shade contrasts while preserving a very transparent watercolour. 

Beware that there are many shades of white in the various brands of paper. 

In reality, if you were to see samples of many brands of white paper side by side, you’d notice how they differ from brand to brand. Some are off white, cream, other greyish. 

Some manufacturers sell a really white paper. It is therefore preferable to choose the whitest. paper so that your snowy areas, away from the shade will be bright with light.

Collection of Poems Themes: old crafts and ancien customs (in French only). author: Jean-Hubert MABILLE Contact: Tel +32 (0)81 74 14 26

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