In this beginner's tutorial, I go over the basics for creating believable water drops in your watercolor paintings. Paint your water drops in any color. It's all good! To view my available work, check out my website: sandrajschulz.com
Thank you SO much Sandra. This really really helped me learn. Never thought I’d ever paint anything remotely close to a drop and I just did. Thank you so so much 🙏🏾
Lovely instructional video. Easy to understand and you even accomplished the hardest part... explaining “why”. Thank you! I look forward to watching more of your tutorials! Subscribed!
I like to try everything first in pencil and I must say that your instructions were so precise and easy to follow that I succeeded with only pencil. I can't wait to finally achieve this with watercolors. Thanks to you I feel confident that it can be done, lol. Thanks so much for being a great teacher and sharing this tutorial.
Hi Melody Beiery. Thanks for your comment. I'm so glad that you were able to get the concept so quickly! Go ahead and grab your paints. No time like the present~
Hi there! A new subscriber here! I am so glad I found you and your channel! This is the finest water droplet tutorial ‘Ive ever seen! Thanks so much!!!
usually i have seen some watercolor tutorial but this was the first tutorial which was very clear to me and my water droplets were somewhat good after some trial and errors thank you mam you have earned a subscriber
Great tuto! I am a beginner with watercolour ! I would like to show you my result with this water drop in order too see what I have to improve next time !
Hi gigi28 gigi28, I'd be glad to critique your water drop! I do have a facebook page, but I am extremely lame at facebook and don't understand how to make it go, so when someone requests a review I have been asking them to email the photo to me via my website at sandrajschultz.com. I'm looking forward to seeing your beautiful art!
Sandra J Schultz Thanks for your answer. I have sent you an email right now through your site. Do you have done a tuto about transparent colors and opaque ? That will be important to me to learn it because I failed recently to make a tree with many steps.
Hi djihanaa! Your water drop looks great! You got the smooth shading inside the drop and the sharp lines outside the drop too. Excellent. That is difficult to do at first. I will suggest that on this drop you continue to darken the shadow on the "away from the sun" side. By continuing to darken that (it might take several coats) you will make the drop pop off the paper even more. Try this on your next drop: put an x or a mark on the paper that designates the sun. Then envision an arrow coming from the sun and going through the drop. The light spots where the light goes in and the light spot outside the drop will be in line with the arrow. This is a great start! Please send me your next drop!
Sandra J Schultz Thanks a lot for your critique! I have sent a corrected version. I will fill all the sheet of water drops ^^ Also is there a difference in the light when you put water drops below ?
If you look at a photo of a water drop and really squint your eyes, you can see the value changes in and around it. Value means lights and darks. When you are working with watercolors it is difficult at first to get your darks really dark. Depending on your paint brand, you may need to work hard or not so hard to get them. Your value changes inside your first droplet are great. Your value changes outside the droplet are good, but with more coats of dark in the shadow area, they will be even better. Since this is just practice, try this. Get some really thick shadow colored paint on your brush and on dry paper, put it in the shadow area along the outer edge of the water. Then wash your brush and with clear water, wet the outside edge of that paint. That will make it move and the line diffuse. Test how much paint you have to put on the paper in order to get a good dark shadow.
Great tutorial, made it look easy - I did great on the bubble but messed up on the shadow. More practice! But one question, does this mean if I want to paint a lot of water drops I need to do them all first before painting what they are sitting on - a leaf for example?
Hi Jan. Thank you for the question. Assuming you are painting with watercolor you would need to leave the water drop space clean and white while painting the background. I would suggest trying some masking fluid so those spots are protected while painting the surface they are sitting on.
@Jan Stittleburg Great question?👍😊 And... @Sandra J Schultz Really good recommendation suggesting masking fluid! 👍😊 I'm very new to this and was wondering IF (although it'd be more work) one could create a sphere from strips of masking tape and use it in lieu of masking fluid? Or would water seep through the masking tape? I'm just curious because its more common for one to have masking tape on hand whereas masking fluid is more of a specialty item and probably would have to be purchased. Thanks both of you! (I hope I posted this correctly)
@@tlojewelrylove I have had water seep under the tape, so I wouldn't really do well with that - it may depend on your taping skill. Also, making a circle out of straight edge tape is beyond me :-) I bought a bottle of Pebeo Drawing Gum, as it is called, over a year ago, don't use it too often and it's still good. It's not hugely expensive, and in the US pretty readily available at Michaels or Amazon, or any of the art stores. Not sure where you live how easy it is to order?
Hi Isabel. I could give you the colors I used, but it's not really important. The color of water drops in your paintings will be based on the color of the thing they are on. So if you are painting a drop on a green leaf for instance, use the same colors you used for the leaf plus something to lighten (for watercolor it's best to leave the inside of the water drop white to start with) and darken if necessary. I hope this helps. Sandy
Yes! You said that at the end of the video! Thank you! But it's because I really liked those tones of blue that I would like to know the names :) To buy them hehe
Hi Rex R. Just the act of practicing is much more important than the paper itself. HOWEVER, that said, I would recommend that you try to get your hands on at least student quality watercolor paper. It is made for the medium and the paint will flow and behave much MUCH better. I would hate for you to get discouraged because the paper is holding you back.
Experimenting is always great for artistic growth! I think that it may produce a very interesting water drop but perhaps not an exceptionally "correct" one. I say go for it and see what happens!!
That is a great answer - love it. I paused the video to ask the question and as soon as I went back to it you talked about colour and choosing the colour according to what the drop is sitting on also how to shade it. I shouldn't be so impatient but then if I wait I sometimes forget to ask. Thanks for sharing your knowledge.
Hi C Davis. Thanks for your comment and question. No, I haven't seen a correlation between the light part of the droplet and the light that is reflected through. There might be - I just haven't keyed into it. My intuition is that it would be affected by the height of the drop. You know how some drops stand up tall and proud and others are flatter and maybe more spread out? It seems that the tall one would have a more significant light spot outside of it.
