#pentel pocket brush is great if you want to give bristle brush pen a run

[cammiluna]

Cammi’s Blog Series on Watercolor #1

Due to several requests from many of my twitter mutuals, I’m going to talk about watercolor for a few posts.

This is everything based on my own experiences and my suggestions or methods are in no way “the right way to watercolor.” There’s pros on youtube that can teach you how to watercolor like a champ.

I just draw silly characters!

in THIS post, I will list my suggestions on watercolor supplies to purchase for getting started. Later posts during the week/month of February, I will go into defails on specific kinds of paints, paper, brushes, palettes, and then some.  A table of Contents will be added to this original post as more posts are added to this series.

All price estimates are in US dollars

1: My Personal Favorite:

Daniel Smith Essentials Set of 6 ($30 on Amazon)

Daniel Smith Primatek Introductory Set of 6 ($25-30 on Amazon) 

Meeden Empty Watercolor tin with 12 half pans ($11 on Amazon)

Interestingly enough, now Daniel Smith has a 15-color pan set for about the same price as this setup, and it has all the essential colors except for New Gamboge, but it doesn’’t include any of the gorgeous Primatek colors, and the lid isn’t made for mixing color (the water spills onto your lap) so you’ll have to buy an additional palette anyway. Still, iif the colors in that set are up your alley, go for it! 

Daniel Smith has been my dominant paint choice for almost a year now; getting them last February and taking a few months to get used to them after using cotmans for two years and artist loft for the 10 years prior. I didn’t think artist grade paint would be worthwhile for the likes of ME because I just draw character doodles and not landscapes or textures that rely on high-pigment paint to really shine, but I was wrong.  The colors lay down so much better and you use less paint per drawing because of the high pigment load. I’ve painted a lot more in 2008 than I have in previous years and none of my tubes are close to running out!  The Plague Knight and Mona drawing posted above was done with artist grade paint.

I’ve expanded since then, buying another tube of Daniel Smith when I was able to go to Blick with a small wad of cash, or get a Winsor & Newton Artist grade tube for $5 with a Michaels coupon.I also repurposed my Cotman box for my current paint set. I can’t remember how much this whole palette is worth together, but the initial 12-color+metal case setup was about $70 (the primateks gifted to me), and then I added a new color every several weeks or when I felt like I really needed something else.

2: The Simple Budget Grab-n-Go

You are very new to watercolor, not sure if you are willing to commit, or you’re just plain not in a situation where you can be spendy.

Maybe you’ve used those $5 watercolor cake sets and you’re tired of the chalky powder rubbing onto adjacent pages when the paintings dry in your nice Moleskine book

Winsor & Newton Cotman: Sketchers Pocket Box. These days, you can get it for around $13 on Amazon.

There are LOTS of different cotman sets, but this one has two kinds of reds, two blues, two yellows, two greens, and 3 neutrals, which, if you’re a beginner, is a great way to learn about color mixing. It also has some of the most popularly-used colors in the world of paint, such as burnt sienna, french ultramarine, cadmium yellow [hue], alizarin crimson, sap green, and the pthalos, so you can develop familiarity with these and easily find tips and tricks on using them online. Any color you don’t like later on can get tossed in the garbage and replaced with another color (I’ve replaced black with Paynes Grey, white with Cerulean Blue Hue, and Burnt Umber with Van Dyke Brown).

You can make all sorts of colors with this, and you won’t get overwhelmed with having too many colors to glance over.

Refills and additional colors are available for $5+ each

It comes with a small brush. You may not like it. 

Cotman Brush Pen Set, $17 on Amazon.

I’m not a fan of color setup except for the inclusion of Paynes Grey, Turquoise, and a really nice purple, but I LOVE this box!  It comes with more mixing space on the lid and a waterbrush that I think works really well. It’s a very thin tipped brush, so if you want something to more easily paint over larger areas, I suggest getting a medium size waterbrush listed below.

If you don’t like waterbrushes, a foldable pocket paintbrush can fit in the slot just fine.I’ll have a separate post on paintbrush details.

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The main issue with cotmans is that they carry less pigment than more expensive pants as these are student grade. Many of the colors are still vivid and wonderful, and you’ll just have to layer some colors a few times to get some really bold color application on the paper. Many people use cotmans just fine.

avoid Van Dyke Brown at all costs. Look at this Banjo!

3: More Colors for your Buck!

You don’t care about mixing or portability, You love color. you want to explore all that’s available in paint or want to build a collection that’s as big as your copics.

You have options, my friend!

Kuretake Gansai Tambi, $30 on Amazon, $40 on JetPens. I do not recommend these if you like to mix colors or complex layering because these don’t handle that well. I’ve tried layering color on commissions and it would just lift the bottom later of paint after it dried a week prior, and this nearly destroyed two commissions. HOWEVER, if your watercolor style is simple shading, bold, flat colors, using the white of the paper for highlights, this set will be a terrific friend of yours. The pinks, greens, and blues are absolutely fantastic and I use it for my Superstar Saga art whenever I’m home. 

The paint is really opague unless you water it down a ton. It’s still going to look great regardless.

Smaller sets of this are availablle, but since mixing more than two colors at a time doesn’t work out very well, you might as well go with the largest set.

There’s also the option of larger cotman sets with a half pan set of up to 45 colors for $55 on Amazon.

Paintbrushes

For this post, I’m going to briefly list some travel brushes. a more detailed post about bushes will come in the near future.

The main points are:

You would want a water brush if you like to paint with water in the brush, or paint on the go with no real opportunities to put a water cup down anywhere.

You would want a synthetic paintbrush if the stiffness works with your painting style and you want the brush to hold more pigment than water You can get these in assorted price ranges, but the super cheap ones  will wear down and need frequent replacement.

You go for a natural hair paintbrush if you want to make really long paint strokes or paint large areas without having to re-add paint and water to the brush so frequently.  Most of these are pretty expensive.

Anyone may tell you “natural hair brushes are the best brushes” but this is completely up to preference and painting habits Any small brush over $10 will last you a long time if you take care of it. Unless maybe it’s from Artist’s Loft.

A good size main brush (particularly if you do A5-sized paintings like me) is a 6 round. if you could only afford one brush, make it this one. This would be your go-to brush that can do thick fills, tight corners and thin lines as you need. Other size and shape brushes can be added to your set as you feel you need or could afford them later on.

Pentel Aquash waterbrush: $10 on Amazon. You simply fill the barrel with water, and the brush will drip water from the bristles and let you paint without needing to dip the brush into a jar of water. You won’t need a jar of water at all!  Some people love the convenience, some people hate how out-of-control the water flow gets.

I recommend the medium for a main brush. If you need a finer point for details, you could get one as a secondary brush, but if you feel you don’t need it, then just the medium is fine.

I just started using the Pentel brand a couple of months ago and can’t give judgement on them yet. Other brands I’ve tried before needed replacing at least twice a year with regular use.

I love travel brushes because I like the bristles to be protected when I take them places.  Normal handle bushes can be cheaper or longer.  Personally, I don’t look for brand names when picking brushes, I look for the material of the hair.

Both Escoda and DaVinci make great Red Sable brushes, and they have been my mains for two years. Expensive as they were, they are still working great and have perfect sharp points 18 months later. Not to mention, I’ve made the money back through watercolor commissions, in which these brushes allowed me to complete more commissions in less time.

White Taklon has worked well for me for synthetic brushes. Princeton has been my regular brand in late 2008 since I was able to snag those at Michaels in the mixed media brush section.

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That’s it for now! Next post I’ll cover watercolor paper.