Working Tight with Watercolor
Tips and Tricks.
Working Tight with Watercolor
A lot of artists work with watercolor because they prefer wash effects over a tight, clean look. But to me, getting a clean line out of watercolor is as interesting as getting a painterly result.
The above A DISTANT SOIL cover painting was done in watercolor. I didn't use pencils or any other tool to get the tight detail work.
Watercolor behaves very differently depending on what you're painting on, and here I worked on a Strathmore 500 illustration board. This is a lightly textured vellum surface. If you know art papers, you know vellum usually means very rough. But this is much smoother than most vellum papers and it takes watercolor well.
I've seen so many artists struggle with their watercolors, and then they dump them and resort to markers because they can't get the control they want with paint. But the real problem isn't the paint, it's the ground. People don't know enough about the properties of the papers they're using to choose what works best.
Since I have never managed to get around to learning to use an airbrush, the background on this piece is painted entirely by hand, and I didn't use any masking fluid, either. But I got some fairly clean gradients out of it.
For getting certain airbrush-like effects with watercolor, simply erase the paint. An electric eraser is perfect for this sort of thing. I not only use this to rub down ink lines before I try covering them up with pro-white, but I use them to create glow effects or clouds. Since I didn't have an electric airbrush when I did this piece, the effects here were done with a standard eraser. But believe me, an electric eraser does the job better.
With the nibs, you can dig into those nooks and crannies.
Here's another tightly rendered watercolor. I wish I'd had an electric eraser to tone down the rouge effects on those cheeks and rub out those highlights! But as you can see, the rendering on this piece is very clean, mostly due to the board I'm painting on.
On this piece, some hair details were done with colored pencil: so much faster than pure watercolor! And many colored pencils are lightfast.
I highly recommend Strathmore 500 illustration board for this sort of work. Most of the TROLL BRIDGE graphic novel art was drawn on this board. I also use Canson. It doesn't come in standard comic art board sizes, so I buy large sheets and pay to have it cut down at the art supply store for my needs. Tell the art supply store to save the scraps for you, they're great for small art and swatch tests. Some stores will throw them out if you don't ask.
This is a piece with fairly tight watercolor effects, this time on a hot press Fabriano Artistico paper. This is also very heavy paper and it doesn't buckle much at all. I love it.
This cold press paper barely bled, but was highly reactive to the tiniest water droplet. You may want to wet down the whole page and let it dry again before you paint. I chose to just tough it out, but you can see a couple of places where the tiniest droplets show.
If you're looking to get a lot of wash effects, this is hard to do on this paper. But if you're looking for a bit more precision and you can work quickly, this is for you. It also takes repeated washes, which some paper doesn't like.
Here's some painterly, wash effects on that Strathmore board to show you can go smooth or tight on this stuff. I really love it.
And here's a piece in progress on some watercolor paper. This got out of control pretty quickly! It was only about 140lb and didn't tolerate handling.
The final was OK after all.
Anyway, point being a lot of folks try to paint with watercolor and don't get the effects they like and they assume it's the paint. But a lot of times, it's the paper/ground.
There's no way around it, you're just going to have to experiment and work it until you find something you like.
Fortunately, most paper manufacturers have websites which will let you order a sample pack. Some will even send you samples for free. Don't be shy about asking, you'd be surprised what some will fork over for an online review.
So two things that frustrated me in my early attempts at watercolor were controlling where the paint went and this hard edges where the paint collected and dried. Like you Colleen, I wanted to have the control to make a “tight” painting. I learned that if you were working with a dry support you could paint with just water first and then paint with a slightly wet wash the color would “stay inside the lines”. The other issue was addressed when I learned to work the wet edge and not let it dry if I was trying continue with a flat color. Oh, one other “tip” I learned was how to lift color from the board using a clean brush, cotton swab, or paper towel. This works well if your watercolors don’t stain!
Fabriano has excellent sketcbooks etc.