Watercolor Madness And Oily Oil Paint- Help a Noob in Need

[Lost My Marbles]

I'm new to watercolors and I'd love some advice on how to use them. I'm having trouble mixing colors and it shows. I try to get different hues, but they all end up the same in the end. I'd love to make the colors pop out more but It's hard. I'm new to color. up till now I've only worked with graphite pencils so I'm used to being able to make different tones just by pressing harder on the pencil. Any advice on mixing colors?



I also tried out oil paints this is my first attempt:



It's drawn from life and there were 2 light sources (which flattened out things a bit). The perspective is off because I didn't really pay attention to it (yup the phone sucks a lot). I was just trying out the new paints. It has the same problems with color as my watercolor painting. It just looks boring. I'm also not sure how to push the paint around. Do you follow the shapes just like when you're drawing? I don't think I'll be using oil paint again because it dries too slow so I'll be switching over to acrylics but I guess they act the same mostly so it doesn't really matter at this early stage.

Thank you for taking the time to read this and I hope someone can give me some advice on these 2 mediums.

[Lost My Marbles]

Sooooo.... No one can help me with mixing colors? I'd be fine with a color theory book (for paints, specifically watercolors) I think. Any recommendations?
I looked for some books on color, but they are mostly just general theory books.

[bjoern3000]

Hi.

I can't help you with a specific book on watercolor but James Gurney writes a lot about watercolor in his blog


His book on light and color is also a very good resource - I love it.

Remember that watercolor is totally different to oils or acrylics.

[Lost My Marbles]

Thank you for the recommendations. I will look into that blog and I'll put the book on my to buy list (I've heard a lot of good things about it). Even if it's just a general theory book it'll still be an interesting read.

Yup acrylics are a whole different beast I'll have to tame. I thought oil and acrylics were kind of like cousins though, but that might have been a wrong assumption.

[peterrsergen]

I want to suggest you here that for mixing watercolor you must use clean water than add color into water now add second color. I think now you should mix desired colors to get proper color which you want for your painting. So, this trick might be help you to mix watercolors easily.

[Kashmir]

When I want to make things pop out using colours, I work with saturation, I make my focal point more saturated and things around grave.

[Lost My Marbles]

I want to suggest you here that for mixing watercolor you must use clean water than add color into water now add second color. I think now you should mix desired colors to get proper color which you want for your painting. So, this trick might be help you to mix watercolors easily.

I don't think I get it. Are you saying I should clean my brush more?

@ kashmir
oh you mean like the old masters. Not sure if I like that idea though. I just want to get the colors right for now. I'll keep it in mind. Thanks.

I've been mixing with only the 3 "primary" colors and I understand a lot more now. I'll keep on practicing with that. It's surprising how many colors you can make with just 3 tubes of paint.

[Cola73]

Lost My Marbles,
saturation in aquarel is a tricky thing to do, because it works in the opposite way of the opaque techniques, like gouache.
So, in order to make aquarel color show, you need to let the surface shine from below and through the color layer, therefore requiring lazures (transparent layers).
Also, you can use complementary contrast to accent desired color, which isn't really saturation increasing, but can help further emancipate certain chroma.

As for the color mixing, I think you'd do good to mix them before applying to the surface, because aquarel supports only so much lazures, assuming you're working on a glossy surface, while rough surfaces generally support only one clean layer, after which everything starts to sink into the 3rd color wheel.

Hope this helps and it's been a while since I worked in aquarel, so I may be wrong here...anyway, best if you test this.

[Lost My Marbles]

....glossy watercolor paper? What witch craft is this? I've never seen anything like that before. I only have the standard stuff. So you are saying you can intensify a color by putting on layers on shiny paper? I know the underlying paper does have a significant impact on color. The really white stuff works best. So it kinda makes sense. Thanks Cola!

[Cola73]

....glossy watercolor paper?

My bad, I meant a smooth paper, not really glossy (at least I'm not aware of such a paper).