10 basic tips for watercolor drawing

Watercolor is one of the easiest paints to work with, their texture and transparency helps to create very light and tender artworks. But even easy materials has it own tricks, and here they are:

1) When dry watercolors are much more lighter.
While painting you should always keep in mind that the color you see when drawing will eventually change to lighter shades, so using more intense colors is never a bad idea.

2) Always test colors on separate piece of paper.
Testing colors before applying it in original artwork will save you an artwork and help you to pick right colors and shades. Watercolors dry out quick enough for you too see what shade you actually looking for.

3) Even if its dry - its still dissolvable.
One of the most benefits of the watercolor is dissolvance. If applied too much or glazing - its always possible to use some extra water and cotton to remove extensive colors. It won't remove the shade off the paper completely, but make it much lighter.

4) Transparency.
Transparency can be a plus, but it cab be a minus. You can't overpaint your mistakes, but in the same time you can make each layer visible and create more dynamics with it.

5) Move from light to dark shades.
Watercolors is the only paint that makes you move from light colors, and step by step add darker shades. But its always possible to find a way to move from dark to light too.

Few simple things you need to realize if you going to devote your life to art

The world is full of great and talented artists, but not all of them make their way to the top.
While relatives and friends tell how great artist you are, and you get tons of positive feedback about your art on facebook and instagram, how can you actually know that point where you can call yourself a professional artist is reached?

No one gets famous in one day, not even in two. It takes years and years of practicing different styles and techniques, learning basic concepts of composition, experimenting with colors, develop your own vision and that's not the end. Today, being an artist means that you also need to be your own manager and promoter, know the market and ways of how to convert your art into money.

The process of creation of a real masterpieces takes time and effort, you can't neglect any part involved in it. As with amount of the artwork done your drawing skills grow, one of the best advises here is too keep every bits of your work, sketches, unfinished drawings, even artworks you failed - all of them is an actual reflection of your growth, keeping it chronologically organized can show you how quick is your pace, or when you had a boost. But it also important for your portfolio and resume.
Reviewing your old work will help you to go through creativity crisis moments and get out of the comfort bubble to try some new techniques, maybe more complicated type of work or completely different style.

There is no giving up! In art you have only one way - to move forward. There's literally no limits in any type of artistic activities, with every year more and more artists implementing standard processes, combine arts and crafts, create completely new techniques. Yes, its a long and tough way to go that has a lot of failures, a lot of things to learn, and even more attempts to create something breathtaking, but in the end, there is nothing more rewarding that ability to see results of all efforts was made.
If you have problems to expand your horizons or get upset with failures too easily - you should consider something else as a profession.

Its always good to be able to handle the critics and be able to learn from it. You should listen to everything is said to you, but never believe it right away. Critics is a good tool to see your own strong  and week sides, the only problem is might be upsetting and actually discouraging for sensitive artists. If you want to go pro, you better grow a few additional skin layers and learn to see if the critics coming from someone who knows what they are talking about or a know-it-all. Always listen to those who might be your potential buyers or more experienced artists, but never - those who have nothing else to do but criticize everything.

Follow your vision. It might take a while, but sooner or later, every artist find their own unique vision and style of creation. You can try any known technique or copy someone else style, but you should always follow your own vision and style. It might take a while, but isn't everyone wants to be unique and not just a copy cat?

No one's perfect. If you ever have a feeling that you are failing, you can't get your art to the desired level or that you are empty on ideas - do not get upset. It's a normal process and happen to everyone every once in a while. There is no human being on this planet that is perfect in everything, those who think they are - far from it. There is a gazillion great art, but when you look closer to it, you might notice that some elements off or not proportional, colors are not so great, and so on. If you see mistakes in your old art - this is what makes you better, it forces you to improve and move further. 

So... never give up, follow your dreams, and don't let any mistakes bring you down! :)

Laws of artwork composition

    While learning how to draw one of the first and basic steps should be the laws of composition. A lot of self-taught artist skip this topic, as they follow their inspiration, however in order to progress, sooner or later, these laws should be learned and here they are:

1) Focal point as a center of the composition

Focal point is not just geometrical center on the paper or canvas you are working on, it is a main object or a figure around which the whole composition revolves. Determining where is your composition center suppose to help to highlight the dynamics of the art work. The focal point is the first thing that catches a viewers eye, all the rest - is just additional strokes that lead eyes to the composition center.

2) Elements quantity and location 

Quantity of the elements on the composition is a very tricky thing, even amount of elements can make your drawing really static, while odd amount of element makes the composition look more realistic and dynamic. Human brain has this magical ability to pair and analyze objects to interpret them, therefore in order to prevent the composition to look dull or too symmetrical artist needs to think through the right combination and right location for each element in the composition.

3) Perspective of view

Distance between elements and angles of their location - is a perspective of view. This is the most important thing to learn in order to make dynamic artworks. Objects that are far away look smaller than objects that are near,  a view from above makes drawings more dimensional and less flat, objects on the back usually stand behind the one in the front and never touch edges together, the are better located one behind another. And the last thing to remember is that changing the angle of the composition from the straight view gives the artwork more intriguing and edgy look.

4) Balance of the composition

Symmetry creates a balance and peacefulness, while asymmetry brings more action and excitement. Balance is also controlled by the shapes and colors. Soft and round shapes can be mixed with sharp and square shapes, same as warm colors can be matched with cold, but mixing those is a very delicate process. Its really important to make sure that everything looks in place and not out of balance. Even chaotic at the first glance artworks are very well balanced.

5) Colors and shades

Balance in colors is quite important, you can mix warm colors with cold, as long as one of them is dominant, same goes for shades. Colors are creating another depth for dimensions, shadows and shades highlight the curves and textures, they are to help create volume in the composition.


And the last thing I want to be mentioned is: always, whatever you drawing, experiment with lines of the horizon, dimensions, angles, shapes and proportions. Don't let yourself get caught in drawing same usual composition types, there is no good in routine when you are an artist, it prevents you from growth. 

Head proportions and all you need to know to draw a proportional face

    While learning to draw a human body first part you start is a head. Right proportions for the head and the face sometimes are very difficult to comprehend quickly, as everything good in this world it requires study and practice.
    First thing you want to start with its a simple front, profile and 3/4 views. If you just began drawing, you might want to sketch a bunch of heads in different views in a simplest way to get your hands and eyes get used to drawing the right shapes. It is quite a fact that the more you draw simple objects the more your hands learn. When I started to draw I  used to draw eyes all the time, they wasn't so great but somehow from a simple eye I jumped to drawing more complicated things.

Here are few examples with proportional marks:

Technically, when you want to draw a proportional head you draw a circle and then adjust a jaw to it. 

A vertical line across the ball where jaw line connects to it is where you should place the eyes, the line where the ball ends indicates where the nose should be. In order to place the lips, personally I draw a little circle on the chin to visually create a dimension of a chin and see where the lips should be located. 

I've seen a lot of people who start drawing human head from the eyes, then nose and lips, and shape the head afterwards, but, to be honest, its twice harder to get the proportions right, and have a pretty looking face in the end. 

Here are some more technical sketched that might help you too see the proportions systems or develop your own vision how to get things right:

How to draw female body, body proportions

    First of, here is quite interesting collection of drawings that might help you to get the head proportions: how to draw a face. 
    And here are just bunch of a pictures that show the measurement ratios of a female figure:

    I like the last one, because its actually first time I found a sketch of female figure proportions in different positions.

    Proportion tutorial on how to draw hands by Joshua Nava is a professional tutorial that reveals all the possible ways of understanding angles and proportion of hands, best about this hand drawing tutorial is that it also shows hands in motion, so they don't look stiff.

  And for the end a few sketches of feet :)

  

  

Woman hair speed drawing, how to draw realistic hair

    These speed drawing videos are showing how to draw realistic hair with pencils, in both b&w and in color.
    Easy way to draw black-and-white hair:

    And here are more professional tutorial on drawing hair:

This video is a great and rare tutorial on how to draw light hair on the dark background:

And the last, but not the least, how to draw the blonde hair with color pencils:

Hair, how to draw! Tutorials by DebbyArts

Here are few video tutorials  by DebbyArts that helped me a lot in beginning to understand how to properly draw and shade the hair:

Hope you'll find it helpful too :)

Kae Yoshino and how to draw gems (turorial)

    Never really draw any gems, so when the time came - had no other ways but google a tutorial. And from all varieties I found a few drawings that catch my eye.

    A Japanese certified Zentangle artist and teacher Kae Yoshino, has few pretty simple and great tutorials on how to draw gems on her blog and here they are.

First of, she suggests to use watercolor pencils to create a base colors.

Then blend those colors with a wet brush. 

Then add more depth to the colors by coloring it more, but with regular pencils.

And now, for the last touch you ad shadowing on the edges, highlight your gems and voila!

Another variation of coloring suggests to draw a dark base before coloring, to create more dimensional view.

Color the base until desirable shades are acquired and then shade the middle with black pencil again, to create more depth to the gem

And for the last touch highlight the gems.

Some of Kae Yoshino tutorials are in English ,but unfortunately most of  her blog is only in Japanese language. If you wanna see more of her works feel free to visit the board with her works I collected on Pinterest.

    Here are the original tutorials links: 
1st tutorial
2nd tutorial
3rd tutorial

    Thanks to Kae Yoshino blog I also learned what is "Zentangle". It is a relaxation form of drawing structured patterns that suppose to carry out wide variety of therapeutic tasks, suck as stress reduction, relaxation, concentration and so on. Was found by Rick Roberts and Mary Thomas and if you want to know more, just visit their official website.