Anybody paint?

thecolourbox

Lots of good info from those that know more here but I like acrylics, absolutely hated watercolours and they put me off painting for years as they are very unpredictable and require a much higher level of subtlety which I don't possess. Acrylics allowed me to paint over stuff which is good for mistakes but also for underpainting to get a deeper effect of colour and basically give me more instant gratification without the work

This one was underpainting with each colour's opposite complementary colour:

EricTheWeary

DiscoStu said:

BLACK!!!

That’s what is in my head when I raise the subject! 

Budgie said:

I do it full time, it’s my job.

My advice would be to avoid watercolours as a beginner. It’s a medium which is seemingly easy but in reality it is probably the most difficult to use unless you are confident. You tend to get one chance to get it right, it’s very difficult to add additional layers without damaging the previous layer and this usually makes for a muddy and disappointing finish.

I would probably suggest starting with a decent brand of acrylics. I use Liquitex and Golden mainly, due to the excellent pigments. You don’t really ‘need’ acrylic mediums but they can be useful. The only one I use regularly is a glaze medium by Golden. The beauty of using acrylics is that you can easily work over the top of a previous layer, which means you can use them in washes just like watercolour or thicker coats without destroying the layer below. I would say that intuitively, most people will layer their paintings - that is, starting from the darkest areas and becoming lighter with layers over the top, with the lightest areas at the top. You can’t really do that with watercolour as you need to work in reverse, ie the lightest areas (usually the white of the paper) are left and the darkest tones are last. If you make a mistake, and you will, acrylic is far more forgiving as it’s a permanent medium. Watercolour isn’t and will dissolve again.

As mentioned above, buy decent quality. Student or studio level is generally okay for paints and the quality of synthetic brushes has massively improved over time. If you intend to work on paper, again, and I’d say this is more important than anything else, buy good quality, the cheap stuff is cheap for a reason, it’s crap and you’ll be disappointed. Something like Bockingford is a reasonable starting point. If you intend to paint onto board, just use MDF and prime it with gesso or acrylic primer and you’ll save a fortune compared to buying individual boards form art shops. 

Lastly, don’t be put off by failures. With painting you’ll have plenty until the process starts to click. You really do learn quite quickly what works and what doesn’t. If you need any advice, just shout!

Loads of information there. I’m quite half asleep this morning but I’ll try to process it later. Many thanks.

thecolourbox said:

Lots of good info from those that know more here but I like acrylics, absolutely hated watercolours and they put me off painting for years as they are very unpredictable and require a much higher level of subtlety which I don't possess. Acrylics allowed me to paint over stuff which is good for mistakes but also for underpainting to get a deeper effect of colour and basically give me more instant gratification without the work

This one was underpainting with each colour's opposite complementary colour:

That’s lovely. 

I would have assumed that water colours were an easier way to start so at least I’m finding that’s not true. 

thecolourbox

I think watercolours are probably fine if that is the style of painting you want to go for, but as somebody with very little subtlety who likes bold colours and "attacking" the picture, they are not helpful. That said, I found I could do much nicer washes with acrylics as you can just water them down and use a make up sponge or washing up sponge to spread it around quickly before it dries.

I tended to paint on thick paper rather than canvas as it was cheaper, but you have to watch it is not too thin as it'll crinkle up.

Drawing is the cheapest of them all though, only need a pencil or biro and a notepad and bingo!

Grunfeld

Last summer I got an iPad just for reading stuff but wasn't long before I started drawing and painting with a program (Procreate) and I'm really enjoying it.  

I've got this thing in my head where I don't like doing creative stuff that commits to permanance.  So I never used to write on paper, record on tape (which is semi-permanent), or paint on canvas.  But I'm okay doing it with electrons.  Electrons love to change so I don't feel upset by changing them. 

I just mention it in case there's any others out there with the same head space!  

What was pretty cool as it happens was giving a presentation recently and I wanted to illustrate a point so grabbed a maker and drew a brain on a flip chart.  Dunno about the talk but the brain got a lot of admiration!  I've never been able to do anything approaching that in the past, and I know it's not Leonardo but I like that I can now draw a bit. 

Nomad

If you haven't used oils or acrylics, getting watercolours would be fine. As I mentioned, they're easier to get started with and you have less add-on stuff to deal with. Watercolours certainly mean the least amount of kit and easiest portability and clean-up. Least technical to start making pictures with. 

To an extent, it doesn't matter what you start with - if you don't get on with a particular medium, it's fine to switch to something else. I started with acrylics and always felt rushed because I was in a battle with the fast drying time - I could never get into blending on the canvas. After a year, I switched to oils and never looked back. I dabble with watercolours, but the transparency thing doesn't sit right with me - I generally like to add opaque layers and only have blending or colour mixing through transparent layers if I specifically want it. 


There is certainly an argument in favour of doing sketches to develop your draughtsmanship (accuracy of drawing), but it must be said that accurate drawing isn't a prerequisite - a painting doesn't have to have the precision of a photograph for it to be worthwhile. I don't consider my draughtsmanship to be especially good - everything I've done by eye, whether from life or as a copy of a famous work, has inaccuracies in it. While accurate drawing can be impressive, it can also make you a slave to precision, and that can introduce tedium and dissatisfaction. It's important to try and establish what's important to you in terms of both the process and end result. For me, enjoying the creative process of making marks, and having a picture I like at the end, are far more important than having something that's accurately drawn. 

Whether you sketch or not, ultimately, you don't learn guitar by taking up piano. You might learn some stuff that's transferable, but the doing of playing guitar - fretting strings and twanging them - will be missing. If painting is what you want to do, get paints and start making marks. You can still do sketching as well, but if the wide sweep of a brush appeals to you, there are no substitutes.

If you don't know what you're doing, you will make a mess no matter what medium you're using. It's just like a beginner playing bum notes or falling off a bike. Get paints, surfaces and brushes and just make abstract marks - find out how the paint and brushes behave when you do different kinds of hand movements.

The first thing I do when I try a medium or bit of kit for the first time is just mess about with it - get a feel for how the colour goes onto the surface, how a brush responds to pressure and how the paint flows from it onto the surface. No picture making, just splodges, lines, strokes using stiff or fluid paint, big or small brushes, stiff or floppy brushes, rough or smooth surfaces. Making colour swatches (little patches of each colour to see how it looks) when you get a new set of paints is very common among artists - you can't decide to use a particular colour/brush/etc for a passage in a painting until you've actually used it and have a feel for how it behaves. Swatches and abstract mark making is how you establish that.

Some examples with watercolour, all in a little A6 sketchbook...



Trying out new paints. Some are intense, some wimpy, some have even coverage, some are patchy. 

Picking a few colours to explore marks with a brush...



The grids are to try detail with the tip of the brush, the big swatch to see how graduations work, a bit of blending and some general farting about.

Trying a specific set of four brushes to see how they compare with each other...



Good detail with small, not much difference between medium and large, flat is quite hard to do detail but easy to cover large areas. In the bits with the feathery shapes, the line down the middle has varying brush pressure (starting gentle with the tip of the brush, pressing harder and then going back to gentle) to try marking tapered strokes. The long straight lines and the wiggly ones underneath are to get an idea of how much colour the brushes can hold - do they fade as I get to the end of the stroke? (Not really, for the amount of colour I loaded here - if I want fades, load less colour.)

An actual plein air (outdoors, from life) watercolour...



I'm not shy, or proud, and I ain't no watercolourist, but I like it. Doing it was good fun and very relaxing. Setup for the painting above...



A pad of paper, box of paints, some brushes, a bottle of water, a cup to swish the brushes in, and a little container for clean water for wetting the paints. Add a cheapo folding chair and camping table, and that's it - all set for a couple of hours of chill time.

Nomad

EricTheWeary said:

I would have assumed that water colours were an easier way to start so at least I’m finding that’s not true. 

They're tricky because of the transparency, which basically means it's hard to cover up mistakes. The technique of painting in layers of transparent paint to build colour and effects is called glazing. You have to know what will happen when you put one colour on top of another, like painting blue over yellow will make green, but the specific green that you get depends on the yellow and blue you start with, and how each of those is laid down (pale or intense, etc). I'm a crap watercolourist in terms of using it 'properly' in the traditional way - it doesn't compute for me - but I can still make pictures with it. 

Moonrunner

I like drawing and painting too! It seems quite a few musicians I know like to draw, paint, sculpt, etc.

Btw, fantastic art from the folks who have already posted their art on this thread! Very impressive!!!

Here's a few pics of what I have done:

EricTheWeary

Well we should be going all the stuff in the garage over the weekend from when the kids did art at school, I think we even have MrsTheWeary''s A level art materials somewhere. As I'm undecided how to start I'll probably let what we have already determine that. Hopefully produce some stunning Scottish landscapes on our trip in May...

Emp_Fab

BLACK!  BLACK!!  IT’S ALL BLACK!!

thecolourbox

Moonrunner said:

I like drawing and painting too! It seems quite a few musicians I know like to draw, paint, sculpt, etc.

Btw, fantastic art from the folks who have already posted their art on this thread! Very impressive!!!

Here's a few pics of what I have done:

These are incredible

Moonrunner

thecolourbox said:

These are incredible

Thank you colourbox!