Monday, November 29, 2010

video: painting watercolor backgrounds

When I posted my last video, I asked what you'd all like to see - so this is a very very informal video of how I paint my backgrounds. (Try to see how many times Sophie sticks her hand in.) It was fun!

This is one of the three paintings I finished yesterday, with #4 in the works...

7 comments:

Leonie said...

I love the video! You present what you do so well and it's inspiring. I'm currently frustrated my paints are at home while I am not!

Perhaps a bit of a silly question, but what kind of tape did you use to mark the borders to your picture? I have tried using a brown sort of masking tape but I find I always ruin things when I try to cut the picture out or to remove the tape...

Thanks so much for the video - I hope there's more to come! (Can't get enough :)

frenchtoastgirl said...

Oh, you know, I was going to talk about the tape and then I ran out of time! I use a white tape that is labeled as "PH-Neutral Artist's tape" - get it from an art store. It's sticky enough to keep the paint out but usually peels up very well without leaving a mark. I have the Pearl (store brand generic) version and it's pretty reliable. And it comes in different widths too.

I was thinking of possibly doing another one about tools and set-up - I definitely have my favorites!

kiri said...

thanks for sharing. what type of paper did you paint on?

frenchtoastgirl said...

My favorite paper of all time is in the Canson Montval Field All-Media Book. Acid-free, 90lb. cold press watercolor paper. It takes everything I dish out and more. I just wish I could find it in bigger sizes too; every time I buy a watercolor block of large paper now I'm disappointed because it's not as awesome as this paper.

Anonymous said...

What a great resource!

Jill said...

Great video, thanks so much! Its so cool to see your work coming into being after having admired the finished products for so long. I would love to try watercolours. I'm not artistic at all but you are very inspiring.

Ketutar said...

Dang difficult to comment!
Anyway, I wanted to comment "there is no black in nature"... oh. My dog is just as black as anything black there is in the house, and if that's not black enough to be black, then I can inform your art teacher that the black paint isn't black either, because if it was, we'd see it as grey... there's a tiny amount of white in black paint to make it LOOK black, and a bit more black in white to make it LOOK white - because it's all about what things SEEM... and there's plenty of things in the nature that LOOK black, as black as can be, as black as pitch, like the pitch itself ;-)
Might be there's no black in nature, but you're an artist, huh? You paint the world as YOU see it, and if YOU think you should use black to darken the color, then YOU do it.
My uncle, who worked in paint industry, said that turquoise is a color that doesn't exist in nature. All the turquoise shades, teal, blue-greens, are artificial. LOL So teals are not of that color, turquoises are not of that color, nowhere in the world is water aqua, and all the fishes, birds and butterflies stupid people believe to be of that color are actually something totally different...