I have a question for some artanons, specifically those who are into water color: any tips or tricks?? I'm just starting to get into it and would really want to improve.

>>1570

I do some watercolors (I am not a pro though), so I guess I could try to help. What kind of tips do you want? Anything specific?

>>1570
Not sure how deep into it you are yet but some tips for really new painters:

> Don't skimp on paper
I tend to buy cheap versions of things to try them out and see if I even like the medium before dropping more cash for the nice stuff. This works great in most cases and is fine for cheap water color paints, but you can't skimp on water color paper. Painting on paper that isn't at least 140lbs and wasn't meant for a water medium will be painful. Cheap paint can look okay on nice paper, but even the nicest paint will look like crap on bad paper.

> A lot of effects from from the wetness of the brush versus the wetness of the paper
So experiment with all variations of this. Use a bone dry brush, a sopping wet one, dry paper, paper that was wet before you put any paint on it, and all the combinations in between.

> If you haven't done a lot with color before or are coming from a digital art background then read up on how to mix pigments
It's not the same as picking colors digitally, and although you can mix a variety of colors from just a few paints, choosing different palettes will give you drastically different results.

> Make color and glaze charts for all the palettes you use.
Related to the last point. These can seem boring at first but are actually very helpful and give you a lot of insight on your colors. Google will explain the details of how to make them better than I can. You can also see how opacity and granulation affects mixtures, which can help you get the effect you're going for.

>>1582

I am >>1579 anon and those are some really good tips indeed! The first one is so true haha I use cheap paint and expensive paper lol

Now the last one is really interesting, I might give it a shot.

>>1582
Thank you so much!

>>1579
Specifically, I'm trying to do watercolor of landscapes, so I'm working with a lot of greens (and browns) right now. I don't want my piece to just turn into one blob of green and brown so is there anything I should do to avoid this?

How do I prevent my art from looking muddy when using watercolors? I want crisp looking strokes but it all ends up looking muted and muddy.

sorry for bumping thread, but i was recently asked to design a t-shirt for the new year and was thinking of drawing traditionally and using digital programs to clean up/add type. but i wasn't sure how the traditional ink would look printed on a t-shirt, how to handle different colors schemes (maybe they want white lines?), and how silk screening/printing process would work with a digital file (i am not the one printing, so i wanted to make sure everything's correct on my part). i'm really new to this, so i was wondering if there are any advice or things to avoid.

>>1669
light to dark, let darks dry for a bit too

Throwing some figure drawing reference in here because I want to improve in that area:

(NSFW in the artistic nude sense)
http://freshdesigner.com/figure-drawing-reference/
https://www.posespace.com/posetool/default.aspx

>>1564
does anyone have any tips for making more lively poses/forms? Whenever I draw poses from references, they always come out stiff, and I am just trying to understand how I can make them almost as lively as how you would see figures in cartoons or comics.

>>21485
Do a lot of gesture drawing.
It means that you need to practice how to capture a pose (or more accurately, movement) with simple lines, instead of drawing the whole figure. Basically, the first step in figure drawing.
Pic related, from Figure Drawing: Design and Invention by Michael Hampton.

>>21507
thank you!

>>21485
You want to find yourself a live model session somewhere in your city and practice drawing those poses in less than 2 minutes, sometimes less than 30 seconds. I won't say it's impossible to do from photographs, but the two major issues with that are
1. It's super easy to overindulge yourself as far as time is concerned, you want to force yourself to go fucking fast.
2. Photographs "flatten" the image of the human form for you. If you actually physically see a model pose for you in real life, you are forced to learn how to capture the general essence as any shifts in perspective will instantly change the subject matter, even a few inches.

>>21546
>If you actually physically see a model pose for you in real life, you are forced to learn how to capture the general essence as any shifts in perspective will instantly change the subject matter, even a few inches.
this makes a lot of sense, one of my art classes had a live model, and I improved greatly during that time. We were timed too, w eonly had 30 sec to a minute to draw a pose. But now I have felt that my progress is slower or just not as constructive as before… Ty for the advice I greatly appreciate it, I will have to try implementing that again in some form