Making Your Own Watercolor Paints

I think everyone has had the opportunity to paint with watercolors. Perhaps that is because painting with watercolors has become a regular activity in schools. Watercolors may be difficult to master is subtleties, but unlike oils or acrylics, they are essentially child-friendly. They are so easy-to-use and their water base is non-toxic. This is why most preschools and kindergartens usually use them in parts of their curriculum.

Watercolors are an excellent medium for any budding artist to start in. But before you start painting, how about making your own watercolor paints?

The idea of making paints may sound daunting, but remember most artists before the twentieth century mixed their own paints. With easy access to the ready-made art marketplace, the art of mixing paints is something of a “lost art.”

But creating your own watercolor paints is actually pretty easy. Here is an example making the children’s version – mixing a batch of watercolors for professional use is a more involved process…

First, you’ll have to get together some basic ingredients. You’ll need the following:

• 3 tbsp baking soda
• 3 tbsp cornstarch
• 3 tbsp white vinegar
• 1 1/2 tsp light corn syrup
• food coloring

Note that the measurements can be doubled or tripled depending on how many people will be using the watercolor. This should be enough for a small group of four, but for larger groups add a bit more.

By the way, the corn syrup is the binder, the substance that will keep your pigments together, for your watercolor so its pretty important. YBefore there were bottles of corn syrup on the grocery shelf, artists made their own glucose syrup. “Glucose syrup” is just a fancy name for a sugar solution. To make it, just boil two cups of sugar in a cup of water. Mix it well until you have a clear solution. Now that you have your binder, whether a homemade sugar solution or corn syrup, it’s time to start.

First of all, mix the vinegar and baking soda together in a small bowl. It will start to foam, but that’s a natural reaction, so you just keep mixing. When the foaming has died down, it’s time to add the cornstarch and your syrup, to the mix. Keep on mixing until you get a smooth consistency to the mix. This will be your clear base.

Now that you’re got your base, it’s time to create your color sets. Get several bottle caps or small containers of similar size and pour in the base. After you’ve used up all the clear base, you just add a different food coloring to each small container. Be generous with your coloring amounts – the color needs to spread well, so this means you also have to stir a bit. When you’re done, there’s only one step left – put the caps in a cool dry place so that they can dry.

By the next day, you’ll have a dry set of watercolor paints ready for use!

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Painting With Water: Some Basic Exercises On Using Watercolors

Painting with watercolors can be the most challenging experience a beginning painter may have. This is because of the difficulty with handling this particular medium. Water is a difficult base to work with because it warps the paper beneath it and the fact that it does not stick immediately to the paper when applied. This means you need to have a deft touch to your handling of the medium so that it reaches its maximum potential.

How exactly exactly do we go about learning how to paint watercolors properly? Well, here are a few exercises where you can earn the skills necessary to have a skilled hand with the medium.

a) Painting Bands – One of the basic things that you need to learn is how to control your laying down of color. First, ready several colors for use. You will also need average-sized paper to do your strokes on. Then, choose your heaviest brush for this exercise. Then you dip your brush heavily in a particular color, then draw a long stroke across your paper. Don’t make a straight line – draw a wavy, curved line. When you’ve done with your stroke, immediately clean you brush then move on to your next color and do the same thing under your previous line. Make sure that the lines are as close possible without touching. Especially avoid mixing the colors. Do this until the paper is filled. This exercise teaches you how to control your strokes so that you maximize coverage without causing an overlap.

b) Varying Thickness – You don’t always lay down a flat continuous line. You need to learn how to vary the thickness of your strokes. Prepare the same materials as the last exercise. Fully load your brush with watercolor, then do a straight stroke across the paper. While doing this, increase pressure on the brush to thicken the lines, then decrease pressure to thin the line. Alternate the thin and thick parts. After doing one stroke, clean your brush and do another stroke in another color – however, try to match the previous thin parts with thick parts and vice versa. Try to avoid any overlapping parts. This teaches you how to control the application of your paint’s width at will – another useful skill for a prospective watercolorist.

c) Flicking Strokes – Prepare the same materials once again. This time you will learn to apply light and fast strokes. If done improperly, they have a tendency to spill all over the page – but if done well, the effect is similar to drawing blades of grass. To do these strokes, ready your brush with color. Then place the brush on paper angled towards you. Do a quick flick outwards and upwards. The end point of your stroke should end in a feathery point. This can be difficult at first, but just keep on trying.

There you go, three simple exercises that teach you control of your brush and paint as it hits the paper. Continued practice will only earn you improved skill, so keep on doing it to improve!

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