Finished piece
Part 2

alright, well I've come across a lot of people who requested me to write a tutorial on my painting process. Naturally it's difficult to explain this compared to a photoshop piece where I could simply screen capture my progress or show the layers. So I took my time, took lots of photos and wrote down how I would finish a piece.

tools
1.
Water color sets - Well, I'm not picky. So I don't mind buying a basic Crayola elementary school set you can buy in any drug store. You can go and buy water color paints which come in wide variety of tones, but this is simple if your good at combining colors. By the way, the smaller set is something I use when I'm on the road doing life painting in parks. It comes in REALLY HANDY! So don't under estimate those little ones.
brushes - Now this is where it might become tricky because there are a lot of different types of brushes out there. Water coloring is different from other forms of painting, so your not going to need harsh bristles that you would in Acrylic or Oil based paintings. You will want to buy Sable or Synthetic brushes. Majority of water color sets come with a simple synthetic brush, they work lovely if you wish to use them. Personally I perfer the feeling of sable brushes. Now there are three main types of brushes Round, Flat and Filbert. Round is the typic style of brush, flat is self explanatory and there is filbert which is a blend of the two. For this I'm going to use a large Filbert and a small flat.
Hair dryer - Any Hair dryer will do. Comes in really handy to dry up the paper and dry up puddles of water. Since water absorbs any pigment on the brush, it's good to use this so you can speed up the process.
2.
Water color Sheets - You can buy a book of these in any art store. I'm using Cold Press, which actually warps when water is applied to it. If you don't want that, then use Hot Press. Although this paper is SO well made that it warps only a little, so it's not that bad.
3.
Keep Paper Towels and a spare sheet close by. You see the sheet of paper you can practice your colors before you apply them onto the sheet. And the paper towel to absorb water and clean the brush. Unlike a hair dryer which drys out an area a paper towel absorbs the water and pigment before it can set into the water color paper. Consider this almost as an eraser for those accidents you might have.
4.
Make sure you can tell you cups of water appart. For water coloring and painting it's good to have a tray with separate dishes to separate your water from dirty to clean. Although for this tutorial I'm going to be practical so I'm using the yellow cup, and by the way empty and refill your cups the pigment in the water colors will stain the water which will appear muddy when you want some lighter tones later on. Also the pigments might stain your cup, so consider getting plastic cups instead. Don't worry, water color isn't toxic, although acrylics and oils are, but it tastes like gravelly dust... personal experience.
Techniques
I won't go to into too much detail, but I'll explain a few techniques.
Water coloring is different from other forms of painting, it's all about how much water and pigment you have on your brush.
5. As you can see I did a comparison between too much water from left to less water on the right. The more water drags around the paper and the pigment will settle at the last point of your stroke. Compared to the last one which works almost like painting traditionally. So practice a bit on water color paper to see if your ready
6.
Absorbing Colors - This is different technique. What you do is layout some water onto the paper. b. just press down on one edge with your brush with a lot of paint in it. The water will just suck it up. C. as you can see the water will move and spread the pigment all over the that stroke. d. when it's done it will dry up like this.
It's a misty effect that you might need practice on. So try it out.
Continue onto Part 2