Tips and Tricks for Beginner Artists

This picture I took with my phone, as I was taking part in a plein air competition over a weekend in late  August this year. A few weeks before, I went to the area the where the Plein Air was being held.  I took a lot of photos to use  preliminary sketches at home so, I could figure out where I wanted to paint, plus being Ireland, and it rains a lot I needed to look for somewhere with a bit of shelter.

When I take photos on my phone or camera, I will always convert them to black and white as this helps me see where are  tonal values. In other words, where are darkest areas, mid-tones and lightest tonal areas. 

Starting out keep it simple. Now, looking a colour photo it can be hard to see where is the mid tones and the light and lightest tonal areas or values.

The darks are the easiest in my opinion, as dark represents shade. I have purposly made the picture bigger to help you see the dark areas, as a suggestion, make a note of them before reading on and see if you have them right.

The darkest tonal area is the shadows around the trees, the reflection in the middle of the water, the shadow side of the pebbles of the shore line and just under the bush to the right hand side.

Looking at the colour picture, the sunlight is falling onto the river, it was not an overly sunny day but as it was an evening sun the shadows were quite low.

The mid tones are the tree line in the far distance as the sun is shining down on them, the tops of the pebbles at the shore line, the wall at the top of the weir, the bushes on the weir edge,  along with some of the trees on the shore line going down river on the left hand side.

The lightest tones are if you like the highlights, or what is white. First of all, the sky it is very light tonally compared to the rest of the tones with in the photo. Some of the tops of the pebbles and the boats on top of the weir. Even barge's windows are very light in tone, they actually have the sun reflecting off them.

To get better at figuring this out, I would suggest to look at a few photos on line and make a pencil sketch a HB pencil is fine to use. By practicing, squinting at the shapes of the picture (I suggest a landscape) these are the easiest to sketch even looking out into your garden. Its good practice. 

Another tip would be to use the blur tool on your phone filters to blur the photo so you just have shapes. 

Blurred filter on my phone.

Now as you look at the picture all the details have disappeared, making it easier to see where it is dark, mid and lightest tones. The shapes are easier to focus on when just starting out.

Unfortunately,  in art there is no quick way to master sketching, it's practice, practice. If you can every day, it does not have to be long, 15-30 mins a day is perfect when starting out. It will take all the stresses of the day away for that short time!
Be prepared for fails and lots of them, thankfully erasers/ putty rubbers were invented to remove any slip ups!
Paper wise, when starting out keep it simple, a nice cartridge paper form any good stationary shop or on line. You are starting out on a new adventure, so keep it simple. 
As I said before, I want to help make this simple, so Ive done a step by step approach to sketching this and I will also add watercolours to the second sketch which I will share here with you.

Have a go, its fun!

Here are the tools that I used;

HB pencil,  and a putty rubber, the putty rubber are about here in Ireland €2, but they are invaluable, as you can pull them apart and twist them into a fine point to just take small bits a lead away from the paper. This works on most papers.

The only paper that I have found they can tear, is rag watercolour paper as it is quite soft and not very resilient compared to other paper out there.  (It's mostly used by watercolourists who don't rely on pencil markings or sketches when starting out). But this is for another day!

Simple sketch of the shapes only.  Think of it, as you are mapping out the scene.

Here I have added the dark tones. I used a 12B pencil, as it is quite a soft leaded pencil, be aware when you are sharpening these the lead breaks a lot and it doesn't really matter what brand you have. As the lead is the softest its going to break.

Adding the mid-tones to the sketch, these tones normally fall just behind the darkest tones, as you can see from my sketch notes the pencils I used are soft lead pencils as these can blend very well together, the HB that you sketched with initially is relatively considered a hard pencil, but by adding the soft 3B and 4B pencils you get soft muted tones. This reduces the harshness of the dark tones of the 12B pencil.

The next step in making this sketch more pleasing to the eye is to blend the tones together. For this I used a cotton bud (Q-tip). I use a gentle circular motion when blending, you will notice that some of the lead will collect on the cotton bud and this then can be used in the water and areas that you have not used any pencil. 

This is a simple sketch I would suggest that you try it with many different landscapes, not necessarily with water, mountains, meadows and even cities with buildings are easy enough to do. In some ways building for they lines and boxy shapes some may find easier as the darkest tones are much easier to spot. The mid tones can be the tricky tones to find. 

So, As I mentioned above I am going to share a step by step process that I use when doing a quick watercolour sketch of a landscape. I always do the initial first sketch in pencil and then move into watercolours or any medium that I feel will work for the piece. 

Many artists who paint with watercolour will use the wet in wet method. I do not use this style for the majority of my watercolour paintings. I much prefer to build up the layers of colour with the dry brush technique. My paper remains dry and my brush contains the water and colour.

My sketch book is A5 its not very big so very handy to bring with you out and about if you want to sketch on the go. The paper is 100% cotton  which I have found to be essential when working with watercolours. These can be expensive but I have found that I have become less frustrated by being able to lift off paint with plain water and less buckling compared to wood pulp paper.

Like many artists, I will always say spend within you means, do not go spending huge amounts of money on paper if this is only a hobby, but do buy the best quality that you can afford.

Using the same photo, I will start with watercolour pencils, I actually don't have many just a few in the tones that I will work with. I also have a fine liner pen in this assortment as I wanted to introduce some line work into the painting. It is essential that you use a fine liner pen that is waterproof. Otherwise, you will have an inky mess. 

Here, I shaded on the watercolour pencils on the opposite page in my sketchbook as I wanted to see colours of each pencil and how I can get a gradient of colour and by mixing the pencils dry to see what colours I would get.

My sketch with the watercolour pencils and then blending them with water. I have outlined the boats on top of the weir with the fine liner pen. Along with blue colour with gaps to suggest clouds.

Here I have added the green tones from dark to light and blended the picture with water. I have left gaps, and I will be using watercolours from now on.

Above are Half pans, I normally buy the half pans empty and then fill them with my watercolours tubes. The reason for this is that I have found that I can premix colours that I know that will work for tonal shades that I have come up with over time. Also, I have gouache in my half pans too. You can actually intermix these mediums together. The brush is one of my favourites a No.6 synthetic. It has a lovely fine point, and the belly of it is big enough to hold enough water and colour for my style of art.

In the above image you can see how the painting has developed by adding the darker tones and mid tones. I will build upon each layer slowly allowing each layer to dry. This style may be slower, but you can define areas of interest within each layer. It you make a mistake with a too dark a colour you can lift out the colour with a clean brush to the layer previously, if needed.

As the painting comes to the finishing point, I always take a picture of it and turn it into black and white. This allows me to see when I compare it to the original image that I have already turned into black and white, to check that I have the tonal values correct.  Only then will I stop painting, otherwise you can end up either over working the painting, or not adding enough tonal values.