Rembrandt watercolors

Recently I bought some tubes of watercolor. Really I do not need more watercolors, I am happy with my Winsor&Newton Cotman box, but a store had a 3-for-2 promotion in Rembrandt watercolors and I got a good deal. Also I wanted to check out an artists grade watercolors. They are really good pigments that offer beautiful basic colors and combinations. Although I have not used them extensively, the colors are much brighter than the Cotman equivalents. Nevertheless, Cotman is the student grade of Winsor&Newton, I should compare them to the artists grade.

Concerning the colors, I am happy with my current palette although I do not use some colors very often, like the viridian and the sap green, and I never use others, like the white. I was pretty sure on some colors like the Prussian blue and the Payne’s grey. They were not in my palette and I was very interested on them. For the rest of colors I used the Bruce MacEvoy website. If you are interested on watercolor it is a must read. Great detailed descriptions of colors, pigments and palettes.

Finally I was on these colors: raw sienna (234), azo yellow medium (269), rose quinacridone (366), Prussian blue (508) phthalo green (675) and Payne’s grey (708). Some days later I added some new colors to the palette: burnt sienna (411), burnt umber (409), ultramarine deep (506), blue phthalo rouge (583), permanent red deep (371) and permanent yellow lemon (254). The idea is to keep a warm and a cool tone of each basic color and several earth tones. Usually the greens are a combination of a blue and a yellow, sometimes the greens from pigments seem unnatural in the paintings.

Waterbrushes

As probably you did read on the sidebar, I made the following tweet a couple of days ago:

I got a couple of waterbrushes from my beloved girlfriend. Thank you! I'll be checking them out.

—
Vinyl Eraser (@vinyleraser) January 06, 2012

I was using the waterbrushes in a sketch, so I have decided to write a post with some initial comments about their usage. The waterbruses are a Pentel Aquash (top) and a Kuretake Zig BrusH2O (bottom). Both have synthetic brushes with a quality similar to my regular synthetic brushes.

The Pentel has a fine brush and it could be equivalent to a regular brush size #2. It is pretty good for filling small zones and details. I noticed that when you squeeze the barrel for cleaning the brush, this waterbrush keeps more water in the inner mechanism than the Kuretake. If you are applying washes, it is very convenient, but you could consider remove some water with some tissue paper if you are detailing.

The Kuretake is smoother than the Pentel. The synthetic fibers are different and the brush size is also larger, it size could be equivalent to a regular brush size #6. It seems the water flow is more constant in this waterbrush than the Pentel. It is perfect for washes and for painting shadows. I’d like to check out a Kuretake with a fine brush or a Pentel with a large brush in order to compare both systems and fibers but they seem quite similar.

And this is the drawing in which I was testing the new waterbrushes. I used the Kuretake with the crimson, the cadmium red, the violet (crimson and cobalt blue), the ultramarine, and also for the gray in the edges. The drawing is inspired by a zentagle pattern.

You can see more photos of these waterbrushes and my other art supplies on Flickr. I will be uploading more photos in the next few days.

Four watercolored shapes

A full colored version of an old exercise on draw composition. Just experimenting with watercolor values and shading. Colors in no particular order.

Happy New Winter!

I posted my last entry six months ago… time flies. I was drawing these months although I was not drawing too regularly. I was also building and painting plastic models (one of my many hobbies) so I decided to start a new blog here at WordPress (if you have some spare time, visit it and don’t forget to leave some comments).

I have uploaded some of the latest drawings to Flickr. And I will keep posting my most elaborated drawings there. I will use this blog for experimental works and tools testings.

Inspired by this post by Nina Johansson, one of my favorite artists, I was experimenting with my Winsor&Newton Cotman watercolors. Very useful. The numbers in the rows and columns correspond to the color code.

And Happy New Summer if you are in the Southern hemisphere!

End of Spring Challenge 2011

A couple of months ago, Linda Halcomb proposed to perform a virtual paint-out on the topic “the leaping greenly spirits of trees.” The artists can take part with any kind of artwork. They only must post it the last day of Spring, June 20th, and leave a comment with your contribution in the Linda’s post (follow the link to see the other works).

And the day arrived and this is my contribution. I “saw” the painting while I was doing my abdominal exercises in the park.

I used my Lamy fountain pen with Lamy black ink for the black lines. The ink is not waterproof so some lines were blurred while I applied the watercolors. I wanted to experiment with this effect.

Watercolored leaves

A new testing of the Canson 180 gsm paper. In this case I also used a new brush: an Escoda made from Kolinsky sable hair (size 6). This brush is awesome. Now I understand the comments on the brushes made from Kolinsky sable hair.

The paper responded pretty well as in the previous test. Each leaf has two different colors, they usually go from a darker color to yellow or white. In this case I even mixed the colors directly over the paper to create the purple and it didn’t warp either.

Poinsettia

I have bought a different paper for using with watercolors: a Canson notebook 180 gsm. It is not specifically for watercolor (where are used 300 gsm and even higher grammages) but I want to check out if it is enough for a use without washes. It is recommended for graphite, charcoal and other dry techniques but it also appears a brush icon in the cover.

I have chosen a kind of poinsettia for testing the paper. I watched a video where somebody explained how to paint it and I liked the result. The paper responds pretty well to the painting of the leaves, even when I mixed the red and the white directly over the paper. However, after painting the blue background with a wash the paper warped.

I have also bought a Van Gogh brush for watercolor (series 191, size 6). It is made of polyester fibres. I think the best of these brushes is that they are cheap. It works.