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Watercolor Painting Tips
The following watercolor painting tips will help you achieve greater effects in your work:
- If your watercolor is off in value, especially if the darks are too dark, you can use opaque or casein color to correct them.
- The dark passages can easily be lightened, but the charm of transparent water-color is lost.
- Use unsuccessful sketches as a basis for reference.
- Redraw the composition in the studio and repaint the subject.
- Try to do this as soon as you can, while your impression of the subject is still fresh.
- You may be pleasantly surprised to find that your studio painting of the subject has a more "outdoor" look to it with this watercolor painting tip than the one made on the spot.
- After all, you observed the subject directly from nature for several hours, and even though the spot sketch was unsuccessful you salvaged your mental observations of the subject.
- Use a dry brush to lift the excess color as a wash is completed. This blob of excess color invariably forms when a fully saturated wash is applied. If not removed it will dry darker than the rest of the painted area.
- To lighten a painted area on rough paper use a hard eraser or a piece of fine sandpaper.
- This method, used judiciously, will often give life to an area that has become deadened because of too many washes of color.
- There is a water-color varnish that brightens areas that have become dull through excessive rubbing out and correcting.
- It dries with a sheen, but if it is used sparingly it is not very noticeable when framed behind glass.
I hope you've found these water color painting tips useful.
Click on any of the links below for more watercolor tips and techniques.
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