Ariel Watercolor Speed Painting

If you follow my work, you know I paint angels using acrylic paints. Well, I wanted to try something new so I decided to paint an angel using watercolor paints! I started with a pen and ink drawing then added the watercolors. As I was working, I discovered I didn’t like the ink drawing because it was so permanent and I couldn’t change it. It also gave it a rigid look instead of a soft look like watercolors tend to do.

Having said all of that, I really did enjoy the process! It’s so opposite of acrylics for these reasons:

• With watercolor I work light to dark. I keep in mind the areas that will be the lightest and work around them. With acrylic I work dark to light. Building layers until you reach the lightest highlights.
• I can’t just paint over a mistake like I can with acrylic. There are techniques I can use to minimize a mistake but if it’s a major boo boo, I have to start over or accept it as part of the painting.
• Watercolor dries a shade lighter and acrylic dries a shade darker.
• Once I lay down the watercolor and it dries, I can still manipulate it by adding water to it and “bringing it back to life”…not going to happen with acrylic.
• It’s easy to create a soft, blended look with watercolor but not so much with acrylic.
• Watercolors are transparent when using enough water with the paint so you can see the layer underneath. Acrylic is opaque.
• In order to lighten a watercolor, I simply add more water and to darken or have the color more concentrated, I use less water. With acrylics, you have to add white paint to lighten for highlights and paynes grey, black or another darker color paint to make the paint color darker for shadowing.

It really is night and day when painting with watercolor compared to acrylics but I love them both! I hope you enjoy watching the speed painting of Ariel.

Blessings,

Teresa

“Ariel” is a lesson at Kogut Studio Uncut, go here to learn more.

Tagged as: speed painting