Відео

Ya can't go wrong with Mitsubishi Pencil Co. 😁

I wanted to hate the Blackwing Black pencils. I really really really wanted to the Blackwing pencils... So expensive.... Did I mention, I really really really wanted to the Blackwing pencils... 3 boxes latter... I am hooked! Literally hooked! I love them, because I can get more depth in my drawings, from the blackest black to a faint whisper with a sharpened point/less pressure. Witches have wands, I have my Blackwings. I have drawers & drawers of art supplies, I could get rid of it all, but not my Blackwings. Draw on sisters!

I love BaoHong's Academy Watercolor paper. Such a bang for your buck.

Thanks from Down Under. New subscriber and I used the discount to Craftsy. Bargain

Why are some people getting mad that she is recommending higher-quality paper? She is correct. The paper used in watercolor is crucial. If you are on a budget, you can start off with six tubes (or pans) of high-quality paint and a pad of Arches (or Baohong--less expensive). The paper can be cut in half and you would just have to paint small. The paint will last a long time. This is all you need and your experience painting will be much less frustrating and the results will be better. Of course, you can use a pad of cheaper paper to test things out.

Hi, love your video and good advice. Why do you use different email accounts for your orders? Hugs from Italy 🇮🇹

Brushes are such a weird issue. I have spent loads of cash on extremely expensive NEEF brushes from Australia and just a few bucks on synthetic brushes from AMAZON that are GREAT for watercolor and it's hard to tell you WHY that is although I can say there are brushes that are good for oil and acrylic BUT not good for watercolor. and the size and shape really matter with watercolor. I can't see any need to use my "knife" shaped broshes for anything but ink or water.

Hey Amy!, You are absolutely correct about the paper BUT, HOWEVER - You don't have to throw out your "other" paper because they are good for pencil sketching and even charcoal!

Thank you! This is the best art channel! ~

Crafts is really good .excellent advice. @Thanks

Just started following you, this is a Really helpful vlog, I learned these lessons the hard way! I would add, for me I out grew my student quality paints very quickly too. I wish I'd bought a limited pastel of good quality paints over a large pallet of student quality.

I like mixing my own soft blacks with burnt sienna and aquamarine or using a gray. If it’s too light, I can build it up. It also removed the need to spend money on a black paint😂. (I don’t use ink for line work, only paint.)

I'm still learning how to paint watercolor. BUT... I agree with some points. 1) cellulose paper is great for practicing brush strokes...but not for quality results. The main issue I found was the pilling. 2) I buy cheap brushes for craft uses. I found the tips do not hold up very well, but they are better than nothing for a beginner. I have been gradually increasing the quality of my brushes and have found a difference. 3) Graphite- I HATE GRAPHITE! Save it for drawing practice! I prefer sketching with watercolor pencils in a very close shade . They do not dirty your painting if you use a light hand and the right color. 4) Black paint.. This is a good idea... I'm going to experiment with these colorization tips! Of course, black has it's place in certain styles. 5) Black ink. Now this is subjective. I love black ink, however I just bought a new set of pens that includes a grey color, and I'm really liking it. Haven't tried the sepia pens yet, but will be ordering them. I also have dip pens, but I need to practice with them more. I do appreciate the reminder to spend more time with them. 6) One thing that I would like to add... On Paper.. Using the right texture is important! Examples: *I love Hot Pressed paper for detailed work. * Cold Pressed is better for handling looser and wetter applications. * Rough Paper is probably going to be great for very wet and loose applications, as it can grab the water in the texture. FINAL THOUGHTS: We don't have to agree with each other, try things out and make your own conclusions, but I do think this video can be helpful to some.

Great tips, Amy!

I enjoy your commentary, but I don’t enjoy the speed it up videos. I don’t watch any videos that are sped up or have music. I just want to hear the sounds of your studio and your voice teaching what you are on UA-cam to do. I don’t understand speeding up videos if you’re trying to teach something.

Disagree on paper. I like cellulose for some things. And I like some better than others. One of my fav I found at Walmart. Black isn't that rare. Black is rarely flat. Complementary colors don't always work for something. Ugh. This is why I dislike these kinds of videos. Best for you might not be the best for someone else. Especially when people are beginning. I wouldn't spend a fortune on paper that I don't want to practice on knowing I am LEARNING.

I’d love to see a side by side with the bad vs good of the same painting

Thanks! I have been wanting to try Craftsy but I was hesitant to spend the money. Thanks for the $1.49 price for a year! I signed up.

I like the look of those markers, great art piece, thanks for sharing.

Hi Amy, I love the unboxing, love the sound the unboxing makes and your natural ooos and aahs. Love the chat and supercosy vibe.

I agree with most of your advice, but not entirely with the part about paper. Of course, paper is super improtant, but there is more to the paper than just cotton vs. cellulose. I've used very good cellulose paper and not all cotton papers are used were equally good, sizing is important, texture is important. So I would rather recommend reading about your paper and testing your paper instead of jumping into a big project straight away than just sticking to cotton paper.

how do you feel about using Neutral tint to darken your colours?

I only started drawing two months ago, mostly pencil and ink. Some coloured pencils. I started watching this video because in the future I would like to try out watercolours. From the comments I learnt that you propose expensive brand materials. I could not afford them, so I will stick to the brushes I have, the paper I still have from my grandfather - 30 years old - as well as his box of watercolours. I never buy brands that are recommended - be it art supplies or clothes. What I found irritating in this video, that the whole time you look to one side - as if reading from a screen. Maybe you could avoid that in the future. Thank you.

Thank you for the tips! Now I know why my skins are so muddy, (well it could be me) , but I’m definitely going to try this. So if I understood correctly, erase some of the pencil, then wet it with a fine mister or brush with water and let it dry before painting? You went kind of fast on that tip. Always love your videos!

The best brushes that were available 35 years ago were sable brushes. I know a lot of people don't want to hear this as the hair used to make the brush is harvested from fur farms, so you would be buying something that is entirely wrapped-up in animal cruelty. But it's true - a properly made sable brush made by a skilled craftsman out-performs any other watercolour brush. The brushes are expensive and this is because of both the origin of the materials and also the difficulty in making the brush. The hairs need to be carefully selected and lined-up before they are gathered and tied together. But because this was a premium product manufacturers found cheaper ways of making them to increase production and profits. They just shoved any old bunch of hairs together and then trimmed them to shape. This method does not make a good brush, and the quality and reputation of these brushes has gone downhill for years. I would not buy a sable brush these days as you can't judge the product by the price - even the rubbish brushes are expensive.

Materials are important, but the paper is tops. If on a budget, the most affordable 100% cotton watercolor paper ive tried was Baohong brand They have 2 versions of their paper, academy and professional, but honestly both act close enuf, that u can choose the "cheaper" academy version. Paint is next in priority, theres tons of affordable brands out there that are pretty great, but if u at least want vibrant colors, dont buy chalky dried watercolor palettes meant for toddlers. Those almost always yield weird textures and desaturated colors. Look for brands that have academy/student/beginner lines, in that order of heirarchy. Paint brushes really depend on the user. Im fine with cheapo brushes and "fake" squirrel mop brushes. This will highly depend on each person, but try out whatever you can afford, and adjust onwards. Bonus: mixing your paint on a ceramic white surface such as a regular plate is leagues better than mixing on any plastic surface. Easier to clean, and more satisfying to mix on. And it will never stain. Also some gel pens/ ballpoint pens have waterproof ink. You can test the pen on a patch of paper and wet it to test how waterproof it is. So if ur doing fun little pen sketches, u cna try those out. Unsure about the archival quality of it, probably isnt, but for doodling unserious pieces, it can work.

great beginner friendly advices ❤

NO, please do NOT follow all the rules that the video states if you are beginner artist with a budget on watercolours, they are not necessary for you to enjoy watercolouring. I am so glad so many other people on the comments are also saying the same. You do NOT need expensive Arches paper, Silver brushes, and professional brand paints to start your watercolour journey and enjoy it. Don't get the cheapest things for kids either, that's not the idea because of their bad quality but there is plenty of perfectly student grade materials for you to choose from and not spend a load of money on something you are not sure if you are going to like or keep doing. I wish some youtubers would not stress so much begginners with how their paintings have to be perfect, done with perfect materials. Painting is not just the destination, its the journey, what you see on the road, what you learn, the joy it gives you making it. And of course you can use white gouache, white markers and black paint to enhance or give your paintings that extra special touch, it is not a cardinal sin and it will not make your watercolours paintings not be watercolours. Art never has fixed rules and they are forever changing. Many artist movements would never have existed if artists just followed the rules and never bent or broke them.

Nearly every show or market I do someone tells me they tried watercolor but suck at it - my first thought, sometimes out loud is, "but did you use good supplies? because it matters...." I think the quality of the paint matters too because some of them just don't have the right pigment load and dry dull.

What is nice to know about natural hair brushes is that no animals are killed for the sake of making brushes. Brushes are made from the tail of the squirrels, and the tails are not used for other things, so if they are not used for brush making, they would be thrown away. The brand Rosemary and Co have talked about this.

I mostly agree, and... Cotton is not good for every technique! Recently I had to start a painting over on cellulose paper because cotton paper took ages to dry and my brush strokes just blended together and I completely lost the feathery texture I was going for. Cotton is great for large areas of wet in wet, but I actually don't like it that much when painting details. Black paint has a purpose. It's a good practice for beginners to learn to mix blacks and grays, because certain black pigments (like ivory) are just creating an ashy look. Most Payne's gray, indigo, and sepia convenience mixes contain ivory black, and they're quite popular among artists. However, there are black pigments that add a lot of interest with their granulation (like Mars / Lunar / Hematite black) which is super useful for organic textures like rocks, tree bark, moss, etc.

I wish I had heard advice like this when I first started out. I understand why this is the case, but all the advice for beginners I saw was, 'buy what you can afford' and, 'these ..insert cheaper brands..are just as good if not better then any artist quality you can find'... I am someone who doesn't have expendable income, most recommended supplies are out of my price range, even if they are cheap. So I bought the cheapest most recommended supplies I kept seeing, (cotmon and canson xl 😑) and I absolutely regretted it. I wasted money on supplies I hated and never used again after a handful of tries. I noticed (because of the fillers in the paint, ) I was already hitting pan on certain colors after just a few paintings, and I mean like 4 or 5 small paintings. In reality I would have to replace them more often then I had thought, ( it took me a few months to save up for them in the 1st place,) and I didn't even enjoy using them. It wasn't until I got to the fine art side of art youtube that I realized ' oh I am not their demographic and you get what you pay for.' It took me alot more time to save up for the artist quality, but I use them all the time. It is completely worth it imo, to just take the time to save so I can then splurge and use the best quality for myself. I am not a professional artist, though I have been drawing for most of my life, just a good ole #2 pencil and some printer paper. I only paint for my own enjoyment, and so I actually want to enjoy using my supplies. I'm sure there are people out there that appreciate the cheaper stuff and enjoy them. For myself now that I'm more experienced, if I went back to the supplies I first bought, I'm sure that I could make them work and would be better prepared to use them in a way that works for me; however I still wouldn't enjoy doing so. I appreciate when people specify that there is a difference in how your supplies will work for you depending on the price, what subjects your painting and what your intentions are in progressing your art/style. To know the full reality of what your getting before you buy it or if in my case you already bought it, then to not just give up and call yourself the problem. It's fine if you can't afford the more expensive stuff, so long as you enjoy what your using and it's worth it to you. But this idea that because your a beginner you don't need/deserve artist quality until your "better"? Or that there's no difference in practicing on cheaper supplies? Bs, painting on celulose is completely different then painting on 100% cotton and "cheap" supplies are not cheap if your burning through them at break-neck speed. The 5ml paints I 1st bought of artist quality? I'm still using them and I paint all the time, it's been a few years. Also Paul Rubens and Bao Hong watercolor journals? Etchr? They have 100% cotton sketchbooks that are relatively cheap in comparison, and saving up every couple months for a skecthbook at a time is worth it to me, while slowly building up my paints. Again it depends on what your painting and what are your intentions behind it. To improve? To have fun? Crafts? Fine art? Abstract? Different priorities are going to have different approaches and expectations of what your looking for.

❤️❤️❤️

I was with you on everything until you mentioned don't use black paint. There are so many ways to do things to keep your color vibrancy when painting, but there are things that black paint can do that no other color mixture will be able to do. At least no mixture I've tried has been able to do it. Plus there are black paints that are capable of doing things with flocculation that none of the mixtures I've tried have been able to handle. And there are plenty of black things in nature. I have found when painting to try and match only the values you see in nature with watercolor or acrylic or oils or whatever you want to use can cause the painting not to be nearly as effective as you wanted. I guess I learned how to mix colors earlier than most people like at about eight or nine years old. And I learned how to mix colors using a fairly high number of colors. I guess I have a hard time understanding why color theory is pushed so hard by so many artists, when is only a small part of learning how to mix colors. Learn to use whatever sets of colors you want to use and have on your pallette, have a lot of fun AND STOP BEING AFRAID OF EXPERIMENTING AND RESEARCHING! Researching and experimenting does not have to be thought about as having to climb sandpaper mountains in your bare feet. I have done a heck of a lot of art and I have done a hell of a lot of research and enjoyed it through successes and through failures.

I like to keep different qualities of paper at hand to decide for each painting which is the most economical to use. So if I do just sketching and swatching colors I can use cheap cellulose paper; for small illustrations, ink and wash or if I prefer blooms, I will use better cellulose paper. If I know that I want smooth washes, several layers etc. I will take cotton paper. That way I can keep costs down in the longterm, even if initally the costs are a bit higher because I need to buy different blocks.

I use an HB (hard lead) pencil for sketching, then I roll a kneaded eraser over it like a rolling pin to pick up any extra graphite. Works beautifully!

Some very great tips the graphite pencil omg the light went on that applies to me thank you 😊👩🏻‍🎨

That was an interesting video, with plenty of suggestions for anyone who's finding it difficult to get the results they want with their watercolour painting. My own personal 'revelation moment' came when I switched to 100% cotton paper for anything other than line & simple wash sketches. Suddenly, layering, blending etc became so much easier to achieve - whereas with wood pulp paper they had been almost impossible. When I started out about 20 or so years ago, I splashed out on some quite expensive kolinsky sable brushes (at the time I naively thought that we got the fibres a bit like the way we get wool from sheep! After I discovered the truth, I went over to synthetic only - although I still use the kolinsky sable brushes every so often, as they're holding up pretty well even after 20 years). Anyway, thanks for the much-appreciated video. Kind regards, Brian.

Jazz hands

Very good tips!

My gosh your hair is absolutely beautiful. Love your art also🤣

Thanks for all the hints and good advice! I didn’t know about ‘setting’ graphite pencil drawings with water. Thanks!

I am new to this channel and appreciate the tips on your video.

Thank you for this video! I have struggled with a major creative block for about a year now. It SUX! But, thanks to your video, i am going to commit to the same thing you did, although i am going to start with 20 min instead of 5, because i am not currently working, I am a mom, but my kids are getting older, and dont need me as much, so i definitely feel like 20 min a day is do-able, I just have to "get my ass where my heart is" :)

Thank you for your wonderful advice I really appreciate you ❤

Never use black to darken. Use the complimentary color and use cool color in the shadows and warm colors in the sunshine. Black is a manmade color and does not exist in nature.

❤️❤️❤️Thank you for this wonderful advice. I look forward to watching more of your videos.

Great tips Amy. Thank you.

I agree about the paper I mostly agree about the brushes although don't take it to extremes. No doubt a fine watercolor brush is a thrill to use but no need to spend $80 on a brush when a $30 brush will do what you need. However, a $3 brush is not likely to be fun to use or work for you. It is a matter of degree...a really super fine brush is likely to far exceed my ability to make use of it 🙂I do like Princeton Neptune brushes very much. And synthetic brushes seem to work just fine. I tend to draw for watercolor with mostly watercolor pencils being careful to not press hard. I do also use graphite and lighten it like you or use a harder pencil...unlike many others I do not really care if the graphite shows on the final painting. But not all the time 🙂 I should say that I have no rule or method that I follow 100% of the time. What I am trying to accomplish is my guide to materials and techniques. Brown ink..Walnut ink works well if you like the look. Black paint...well what can I say...there is definitely a place for it. I have painted entire paintings in black paint along with diluted black paint. I suggest not to use it to darken or dull other paints as it makes them look dirty most times. Shadows, where most black paint is misused most often aren't really black or gray, shadows do all have a color cast. Definitely a niche paint IMO.

Great info, thanks Amy!