Summer and watercolors are inseparable

A simple way of using watercolor

Summer and watercolor: that is such an artistic combination! Watercolor sketch, pen and watercolor or purely watercolor are excellent ways to paint summer scenes, summer flowers, summer landscapes and simply enjoy the outdoors and beauty. The easiest way to practice painting with watercolors is using pen and watercolor wash.

That enables us creating great composition and not caring too much about pencil lines and perfect application of watercolor.

I said it once and I would love to repeat it: pen and watercolor wash is a great technique for beginning watercolorists. Some like it so much that they stick to this technique and turn it into their personal style.

Save time, paint effortlessly

If you are afraid of drawing with pen, do the initial drawing with pencil. Afterwards, you can draw over with pen and delete everything else. Therefore, we have a beautiful and clean drawing in black ink, and the watercolor paper is not damaged.

The most excited part is adding watercolor washes, as well as more detailed areas with more concentrated paint. We can create a wonderful painting in less time this way because we do not need multi-step drawing transfer onto watercolor paper and it is much easier to know where to use paint because the black outline clearly identifies that.

Real objects make good painting

Summer is definitely a very suitable time for practicing plants, flowers, blooms, vegetables, fruit and all kinds of landscapes and garden scenes.

I find that implementing fence or corner of a building adds additional impact. White or grey fence looks great with flowers and leaves.

What to do with the background?

There are no strict rules about backgrounds and additional details. Very frequently, less is more. Whenever we can, we should simplify our scene and subject. Whether to include a detail of our subject or leave it out usually depends on our style, intention and skill level. Minimalist paintings look as great as maximum realistic paintings; there is no such a thing as mandatory inclusion of detail in a painting. Many beginning artists wonder: what should they do with the background: leave it as is, white, make it dark or add background shapes and colors? That, too, will depend on how you have captured the subject.

Less can be more

My personal point always is: let the painting or drawing tell you what else to do. It usually does when you look at it carefully and from some distance. Realistically, you should always look at your creation from some distance since being too close to it all the time makes us not notice flaws and strange areas which require improvement. Certainly, step back and have a look. If it is all flat and lacks any dark spots, add some.

Don’t be afraid of darks spots in painting

I find that beginning artists are afraid of dark colors. Even when painting with acrylic where there is no threat of painting something too dark because you can always paint over the first layers and make it noticeably lighter, new artists use no dark color. Having absolutely no dark spots reduces our ability to add volume, impact and impression.

Patience and practice

We all want our art to be great and impressive. However, if you are new to some medium or absolutely new to drawing and painting, you have to bear in mind: nothing happens right away and with the first brush stroke. I have had absolute beginners who were somewhat disappointed that their first piece of art wasn’t a masterpiece. Every skill takes time, efforts and work. However, not being satisfied with the first few drawings and sketches, is no reason to give up painting or drawing. You might be surprised how much better one becomes after a while.

Focus on potential

Focusing on perfection right away will cause you to be disappointed. Any artist will tell you that they have damaged, and thrown out lots and lots of initial sketches, painted over initial scenes, changed the layout and composition completely, switched to a different color or tools: they have done many things before they have gotten to one good painting. Not every drawing or painting is or should be a masterwork. It should be a stepping stone on our way to better us, to better art which we have created.  We use our errors as a way of discovering how to achieve what we want and have intended.

If you love it, go for it

It doesn’t matter what somebody says about your drawing or painting. They might not be the best critics or they might also praise it too much.  Practice is practice, we have to spend time learning until we get where we want to be. Regardless of how somebody looks at your creation, regardless of how much they praise or criticize it, you have to be realistic and admit what is wrong and what is great to yourself. That will help keeping things that come out great and avoiding or getting rid of things that do not work. Do what you are good at. I hear frequently: I am very bad with whatever, I need to do that. Leave that for later when you have more experience. We should do everything we like and love, at least in art.

Application for art classes: Art classes

Copyright notice: Copyrights of displayed paintings, drawings, images of work in progress and images of finished paintings belong to artist Inese Poga. The use of painting and drawing images is prohibited if I have not issued a written permission. That includes no pinning policy.