The 1 to 10 numbering of wetness for the brush is the best tip ever. I have struggled so much with trying to figure out water ratio and was focusing more on paper and paint wetness. This has helped me immensely! Thank you very much!
The more water we use when painting in watercolor, the lighter the color is when it dries. If we paint thick, nearly like oil painting, the color doesn't lighten. I tell my watercolor students, "If it look like you've got the right color when you first put it on the paper...it's wrong! It has to look darker then you want it to be, so that when it dries, it's the correct color".
Didn't know that you are a guitarist 🙂 like me. I recently picked up my acoustic guitar after years of neglect. I enjoyed it , like listening to you playing here. Well done. BTW I am learning a lot from your painting videos. Haven't found a better teacher !! ( and I watched a lot of water colour teachers .....)
This is an eye opener ! Light conditions can be very different, so the colour of the skin can actually lok like here, with coloutful light around a person. No more searching for a certain colour of a skin , yeah !
Yesterday night I followed your advice to create transitions and for me this worked: The first time EVER it worked for me !!! I was quite frustrated before, but yesternight I painted a lemon and a potatoe with LIGHTon them. You know how to break down things to the essentials 🙂 BTW five month of watercolour painting + half a year of pencil drawings I have done so far
Thank you, Mr. Stan, for sharing your knowledge, your techniques and your reasons for the steps you make. Is there any way you could use 2 or more water containers - at least when you film? A glass or two(2) to rinse your brush clean and a 2nd or 3rd glass to have fresh clean water to use for the yummy new paints, for example yellow 😃 I was a self-taught watercolorist for 23 years and silk painting found me 10(10) years ago. The two mediums are very similar. In fact, I use watercolor techniques to paint wildlife, pet portraits and people portraits on my silks. I'm learning faces and more from you to put on my silks. Thank you for generously teaching on RU-vid! God bless!
Needing clean water is relatively unimportant for the beginning watercolorist. I normally have a larger container but for the small amount of painting I did for the lesson, one small cup of water was plenty. If you are painting large and doing very colorful paintings, then yes, having two or three containers for water might be helpful, but even when I'm doing my normal studio painting, I only use one container for water...I simply dump it out and get fresh water if it gets dirty. Glad the lesson was helpful.
Thank you so much for sharing these very valuable lessons in the viewfinder to check your color values - not only to be used to decide your compositions ❤️❤️❤️❤️
This was fantastic -- I think you're the only one I have seen who actually had your water in the shot, actually showing me how much water I should be using. Those little windows to check color? Oh man, what an eye-opener! Thank you !
Finally! A channel that really gets into the very basics of watercolors for beginners ❤️ and the right ratio for water and paint in your brush…thank you! Hopefully after binge watching your channel I’ll also learn the watercolor lingo.
Love your teaching, so inspirational! Watercolor washes are so tranquil to look at but difficult to achieve without practice. Your videos through the years have helped. Thank you.
Hi Stan, great video. I have seen you do this in person during a workshop you gave a few years ago, so it's great to see it again. I have learned a lot from you. One thing that stands out is the fearless way you can work on a portrait in sections and never seem to mess up bringing each part together at the end. That's hard for me and I inevitably try to do it all at once and it looks patchy. Thanks again.
Glad the lesson is helpful. To become quicker and smoother in applying a series of washes one needs to practice what I show in Lessons A, B and C...every day. Like doing scales on the piano. I would recommend creating transitional washes, in black and white and also in color, where you blend out the edges so there is no sharp edge when you are done, 15 minutes a day for at least a month. It just takes lots and lots of practice to be able to do this smoothly.
Thank you for another awesome lessons. Been watching your lessons from 6 years ago and improved a lot from follow all the lessons. ❤❤❤ So happy to see a new lesson!
@@Stanleylestermiller I have a questions. Can I use Ultramarine Blue instead of Phthalocyanine Blue, why is using Phthalo Blue red shade not green shade?
@@vinowakart Ultramarine Blue is a red blue. It will make a better purple when mixed with red, but ultramarine blue cannot make a good green mixed with yellow. Both Phthalo blue red and green shade work much better then Ultramarine blue for mixing color. Phthalo blue red shade makes a better purple when mixed with red...but not a very good green. The green shade makes a better green but not a very good purple...
I love the finished product in color. I've started on a portrait of my niece that I want to look like yours, with the vibrant and mottled look. What is this style? It's like impressionist and realism at the same time.
Glad my lesson is helpful. What style? Well, photographic style would mean the painting looks like a photo. If one can tell it's a painting, the style is slowly moving towards impressionism. The more abstracted that strokes, the less we are able to tell what it is we are looking at...the style moves from impressionism into abstraction.
This valuable information is what I have been looking for on YT for a long time. I've been painting with watercolor for 2 years, but sometimes when I leave it for a while I seem to relapse into forgetting how to start over. These videos give me the courage to start working again with more confidence.Thank you very very much Mr. Stan Miller!
Sorry that the image was misleading...here's the link that shows you how I paint that particular portrait: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-1q1czXQQAIY.html
Stan’s watercolour tutorial was great, but his lesson in stoicism in the face of a tsunami was even more helpful. Seriously, he didn’t miss a beat, didn’t fixate, moved on, completed the job and it’s still a great tutorial. There’s an important approach to life right there.
