15 Of The Dumbest Things You'd Ever Want To Know About Watercolor Technique...That Work Every Time

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Excerpts from the book:

INTRODUCTION

This is the shortest, easiest to read book ever written about watercolor. The idea is to share with you 15 of the “dumbest” (i.e. simple; time-saving; true) things I wish someone had told me when I was first learning. Why? Because you are a procrastinator like me and I want to make it easy and fun for you to get over the hump. So read it in a short checkout line, or open it next to your new palette, then I want to see that paint fly, OK? Go.

WHY WATERCOLOR?

Because it’s relaxing and fun, and you’ll feel really good about yourself. Watercoloring helps you see the world around you and live in the moment. And if you do the exercises in this book you’ll have lots of little little paintings to be proud of and keep for your grandkids.

A little painting to be proud of and keep for your grandkids

  #1: KEEP IT SIMPLE

Keep your subjects simple and you’ll paint every day. Keep your art supplies simple and you’ll use them more. Keep your ambitions simple and you’ll be more forgiving. Keep your resolve simple and you’ll practice more often. 

 The opposite of complexity is simplicity. The more complicated the steps in learning something new, the less likely we are to try it. Therefore #1 dumb thing in this book is “Keep it Simple.”

Watercolor is just “color juice” as my friend Clark Smith says.. Play at it, and you can only get better

#3: TRANSPARENT MOTIVES

The main difference between watercolor and oil or acrylic is that it dries quickly and remains transparent after drying, so the color of the paper and any paint already applied shows through layers of new paint. The effect is sometimes referred to as “glow.”

To see what I mean, replicate the exercise above with thin layers of paint, letting each layer dry before applying the next (about 30 to 45 seconds should do; shorter with a hair dryer). Try to leave some tiny gaps between brush strokes, so glimpses of the underlying paper and paint persist to the end.

 Be sure to leave gaps in your brush strokes where the paper and paints under each new layer can show through

These primary colors are known for their staining properties and relative lack of transparency, They allow less light to pass through to underlying paper and paint, but often they’re exactly what you need

#4: LOVE YOU SOME TRIANGLE

 The color wheel helps us visualize the relationships between primary and secondary colors. It begins with a “triad” of three colors—yellow, red and blue—spaced equally around a “wheel.” Next come the three secondary colors, located between the primary colors, and created by mixing the primaries on either side. 

 Can you get every shade of every color this way? No, but depending on the particular primary colors you use, you can get close. Should you need more colors, Mr. Winsor & Mr. Newton have your back.

Another little painting you could keep for your kids, come to think of it

Here's one example of how the palette and brushes described in this post might look in the real world. Notice the paper towel and strips of scrap paper used to test the color and opacity of the watercolors I mix before painting

MIXING COLORS

The best way to introduce the idea of mixing colors is to have you mix the ugliest color: gray. (We're going to mix abut 50 shades of it, so make sure you're in a safe place.) Why gray? Because gray is what you get when you mix opposites on the color wheel. Mixing gray will help both your understanding of the color wheel and your understanding of another concept: color temperature. What is color temperature? It's the degree of warmth or coolness found in a color, usually having to do with the amount of red or blue found in the color. But we get ahead of ourselves. Let's try mixing some grays.

In the examples below, I have you use four different pairs of colors generally thought of as "opposites across the color wheel" to create grays. For those of you who like lists (and who doesn't?), those color pairs are:

1. Burnt siena and Cobalt blue (known as a "sedimentious" pair for reasons I'll discuss elsewhere)

2. Yellow Ochre and…

(If you have enjoyed this post so far, please consider buying the soft cover book or e-book version by clicking below. Thank you!)

How To Use Key Words To Attract Attention To Your Website

Keywords are the terms that people use when trying to find what they are looking for on the internet. This site is a Squarespace site, and one of the features Squarespace provides, along with ready-made templates and hosting and comprehensive analysis of your traffic, is a list of the keywords that people use to find your site. As a rule, these words tend to be a surprise, never quite aligning with the terms you, as site creator, thought people would use when you first tried to guess them.

A Proposed New Headquarters for LLadro Porcelain, Jay Valgora, Studio V, Architect

As of this morning, the keywords people used over the last week to find this site, whether they were looking for something like it or something else, were, in order of use:

1. architectural rendering
2. watercolor techniques
3. architectural renderings
4. architectural rendering techniques
5. watercolor rendering techniques
6. pen and ink techniques
7. watercolor rendering
8. watercolor techniques
9. architectural sketches
10. watercolor rendering techniques
11. watercolor techniques
12. architectural watercolor rendering techniques
13. pen techniques
14. different watercolor techniques in rendering
15. architectural sketching
16. pen and ink
17. sketching techniques
18. architectural rendering in watercolor
19. rendering watercolor

You get the idea. Actually that's not too bad. A few weeks ago one of the terms was "movable hot tub," so this week's visitors are a little more focused.

I don't pretent to understand how the search engine crawlers that comb the internet every night make a distinction between authentic use of keywords (aka "white hat" search engine optimization or SEO), and the so-called "black hat" use of keywords (such as I am ironically attempting to practice here) but somehow they do, and part of that has to do with pictures (and captions, believe it or not) that relate to the keywords, so I'll attach some of those now and just say goodbye until next time, and thanks for reading this.

This was an architectural rendering in watercolor done for a really nice architect named David at MR Architecture in NYC.

This was an architectural sketch in watercolor done for a speculative real estate project in Alford, MAThis is an architectural rendering in watercolor of a section of a library (to which Shepley Bullfinch Architects in Boston, MA were making an addition to) at Lehigh UniversityThis is an architectural rendering in watercolor of a concert hall for the New Hampshire Music Festival based in Concord, NH by a really nice architect who's name escapes me, but he was a great guy, as were the clients at NHMF!

Use Traditional Architectural Rendering By Hand To Present Your Concept Designs in Human Terms

There is no better way to differentiate your architecture firm or product design firm from your competition than to use traditional architectural rendering by hand--including pencil sketches, pen and ink sketches and watercolor sketches--to connect your client'e emotions with your conceptual design. Digital architectural rendering has its place and no architectural or product design presentation can be complete without it, but if everyone is showing the same digital architectural rendering, than it will be the designer that uses traditional architectural rendering to connect her clients' emotions to her ideas that will cut through the noise of what everyone else is doing and make the sale.

James Akers deploys traditional architectural rendering techniques to help sell his clients' conceptual architectural designs to their world famous clients, whether those clients specialize in sports design, hospitality design, entertainment design or institutional design.

Architectural Rendering Process

I love the process part of making an architectural rendering in watercolor. (See more examples here.) Frankly it isn't that different from the process of making a digital rendering. It's still--and always will be--about emotion and storytelling. Great right brain stuff (or is it left brain?). But the process itself satisfies the opposite problem-solving part of the brain as well: how do I save my client the most time and money while producing the maximum emotional effect? Sometimes it starts with something as basic as photos taped together and scanned.

This project for Hampton College--one of a series of renderings for a proposed master plan--shows a sensitive scheme by Shepley Bullfinch for the renovation of an existing "background building" along Main Street. As always, click on images to make them (much) bigger.

Enjoy more images like this in the Process section of this website.

The Architecture Of Desire: Peep Shows, 19th C. Watercolor Technique and Las Vegas

My job can be tedious, but it isn't always a grind (sorry). As every architectural renderer knows, drawing people is more time-consuming than drawing the exterior or interior of a building. People make or break a rendering. When drawn poorly, they tell the world that you (the artist) don't actually know what you're doing, and no amount of watercolor technique can hide that.

Problem is, drawing them well takes time: time to draw the figures in convincing positions; time to dress them; time to "light" them and paint them in a way that Winslow Homer or Sargeant would be proud of. OK, maybe not that last one, but seriously, when you paint in watercolor, your watercolor technique is who you are, and as a thoughtful person putting their work out into the world, you can't pretend you don't know the work of Homer, Sargeant, Prendergast, etc.

Sometimes that investment of time is less tedious than others. For art's sake, I humbly submit "Peep Show," an entertainment/club venue that I was asked to visualize, (populate) and bring alive for a colorful Broadway director turned Las Vegas impresario. (It's like five renderings in one, so I've included vignettes after the overall view. Also: I wish to acknowledge the important contribution of friend and colleague Chad Rush in helping me get this Sistine Chapel of Soft Porn done on time.)

Click on any image to enlarge, er, um...the image.

Here's the overall view above. Details of the people below. And yes, those are naked women crawling on top of the glass-sealed VIP lounge on stage:)

A Restaurant For David Copperfield

Dining "Half Off." The Magic That Was Almost The David Copperfield Restaurant In Times Square, NY

Many years ago I had the pleasure of collaborating with David Rockwell to design (then do the architectural illustrations and 3D visualizations of) a restaurant prototype for David Copperfield, the famous magician. The concept was part of the genre of destination/tourist entertainment restaurants popular at the time, and this one might have been the most entertaining had it happened. Among the many other delights--levitating tables, waiters disappearing in full view of diners, etc.--was the twice-a-night moment when the maitre d' asked for four volunteers who would like to be, um, sawn in half--I kid you not. The following four views show the design we came up with--heavily influenced by Piranesi's "I Carceri"--for that event,. If you look closely, those of you who know him well will recognize my friend Marty Kapell as one of the people about to dine half off. He's the one in the white sweater vest waving atop the Lady Liberte's hand at the end:)

Appendix: Here are some keywords which will help readers index this article:

1. architectural rendering

2. watercolor techniques

3. architectural renderings

4. architectural rendering techniques

5. watercolor rendering techniques

6. pen and ink techniques

7. watercolor rendering

8. watercolor techniques

9. architectural sketches

10. watercolor rendering techniques

11. watercolor techniques

12. architectural watercolor rendering techniques

13. pen techniques

14. different watercolor techniques in rendering

15. architectural sketching

16. pen and ink

17. sketching techniques

18. architectural rendering in watercolor

19. rendering watercolor

Urban Sketch and Watercolor Technique 1

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15 Of The Dumbest Things You'd Ever Want To Know About Watercolor Technique...That Work Every Time

Attention Pinterest Visitors: I produce weekly video tutorials on painting, drawing, and architecture illustration. Please subscribe to >> YouTube << for videos on each technique. Your support means the world to me!

This is the shortest, easiest to read blog post ever written about watercolor. The idea is to get you over the hump and painting within minutes. Why? Because you are a procrastinator and you know it (or you wouldn’t have started reading this article instead of painting yourself) So start reading and I want to see that paint fly. Ready, go.

WHY SHOULD I WATERCOLOR?

Because it’s a really cool thing to do, and its fun, and you’ll feel really good about yourself. Plus it helps you see the world around you and become one with the moment. And did I mention you’ll have a little painting to be proud of and keep for your grandkids?

A little painting to be proud of and keep for your grandkids

 WATERCOLOR IS A TOOL

Watercolor is a tool for seeing…and communicating…and other stuff, too. If you think of it as a tool, you are less likely to think of it as something precious and hard-to-do and any of the other excuses you’ve come up with before deciding this is the day to begin. On the other hand, if you do think of it as a tool you are more likely to lend it to a friend who will never return it, or leave it out in the rain at a friend’s house and get your dad all mad.

WHAT YOU NEED

You are going to need water, paint, a palette, a brush, and some paper. If you don’t have these already, go get them at an art store. What helps make this book so short is that I don’t tell you which brushes or colors or paper to get.

 Just kidding…see list below where I tell you what to get. The next couple of photos show you the set up I use when doing watercolor architectural renderings, just so you can see I'm not making up that I use this stuff.

Another little painting you could keep for your kids, come to think of it

Here's one example of how the palette and brushes described in this post might look in the real world. Notice the paper towel and strips of scrap paper used to test the color and opacity of the watercolors I mix before painting

• BRUSH: get a nice brush with a nice pointy tip and around a size 8.

• PAINTS: get a tube of cadmium yellow (T), yellow ochre, alizarin crimson (T), cadmium red, French ultramarine blue (T), Prussian blue, burnt umber, sepia, winsor violet, hooker’s green, and sap green.

• PAPER: Buy a small watercolor “block” which means a pad of watercolor paper that is sealed along the edges so the pad keeps the top sheet from warping. Get a small size for starters, say about 6 x 9”.

• PALETTE: Get something with enough little paint holding areas for the paints above, and with bigger, shallows areas for mixing the color you want.

COLOR THEORY

Color is simply…well…actually there have been a ton of longer books written about color. For our purposes, color is what you are trying to copy from life onto an empty, terrifying little piece of expensive paper, with no guarantee that you’ll ever show the result to anyone, using only some strange liquid in a tube, a little brush and some water.

BUT SERIOUSLY

One word: triad. Believe it or not, you are going to use the theory of the color wheel and the color triad to make your little paintings. The color wheel is easy: It consists of three primary colors (yellow, red and blue) spaced equally around a “wheel.” Next come the three secondary colors, located between the primary colors, and created by mixing the two primary colors on either side of them. In other words, red and blue make violet; red and yellow make orange; and yellow and blue make green. Never mind for now that you can’t get every green or every orange or every violet you’d like to get from mixing primaries. But the reason we call the primaries chosen in this book a “triad” is because they have become known over the years to artists as producing the nearest misses in trying to get all colors. They are particularly good at getting there, especially with the help of the few secondary colors we throw in to our shopping list in the previous chapter.

PALETTE

Once you understand the basics of the color wheel, it is helpful to have a plan for how to access these colors. I use the following approach to laying out my palette (see photo below, and photo of real-world palette above). Basically, I just distribute the colors in the order they appear on the wheel around my rectangular palette. The idea is to keep opposites across the palette from each other, and to keep your palette as clean as possible by having similar colors close to each other. That way any splashing that occurs as you mix colors won't overly-pollute the colors next to them.

MIXING COLORS

The best way to introduce the idea of mixing colors is to have you mix the ugliest color: gray. (We're going to mix abut 50 shades of it, so make sure you're in a safe place.) Why gray? Because gray is what you get when you mix opposites on the color wheel. Mixing gray will help both your understanding of the color wheel and your understanding of another concept: color temperature. What is color temperature? It's the degree of warmth or coolness found in a color, usually having to do with the amount of red or blue found in the color. But we get ahead of ourselves. Let's try mixing some grays.

In the examples below, I have you use four different pairs of colors generally thought of as "opposites across the color wheel" to create grays. For those of you who like lists (and who doesn't?), those color pairs are:

1. Burnt siena and Cobalt blue (known as a "sedimentious" pair for reasons I'll discuss elsewhere)

2. Yellow Ochre and Windsor violet

3. Cadmium red and Prussian blue (a dye-based or "stain" based pair, because of the extraordinary staining power of Prussian blue)

4. Burnt Umber and French ultramarine blue

Each of these pairs, when mixed with more or less of the warm color with respect to the cool color, is capable of producing a warmer or cooler gray. Each of these pairs also produces a subtly different gray which, with practice, you will come to know exactly when you want to use. To get started, create an arrangement that features each color in its own small area, then a larger area of the mixed gray between them, with the warm color more dominant on one side, and the cool color more dominant on the other. I chose the silly configuration below, but feel free to use any kind of shape you please. I'll be sure to note your design when I see it posted to your Pinterest page.

Seems simple, right? That's because we haven't done greens yet. Greens are a whole other ball of wax. I once heard someone say that green is the most difficult color to mix because everyone--whether they are an artist or not--knows the right green when they see it. That makes sense when you think about it, because we've all spent our lives in Nature, where Mother Nature reminds us each day that this green is for Maple leaves, this green is for grass, and so on and so forth. It just permeates our brains. But wake up one day and see the two greens switched and even a baby knows something is wrong. For that reason we will stay away from mixing greens.

Just kidding. Below is your exercise for beginning your life long struggle to mix the right greens. Its so complicated that I won't even try to describe it in words, although I have helpfully labelled each of the greens in the exercise below. Just imitate my exercise first, then bust out on your own. The important thing is: keep mixing greens all your life and you may--just may--get one right someday.

Thanks for getting this far. When I originally published this post I was using Squarespace 5, then Google began pushing people to use mobile-friendly Squarespace 7* and I switched over. During the transition some writing and images were lost, so I am rebuilding the original post as time permits. Stay tuned for updates, and thanks for reading this far. Here, in the meantime, are the remaining photos that accompanied the original post. 

If you have enjoyed this post so far, please support my efforts by following me on Instagram here, and subscribing to my Youtube channel here. I promise to keep you educated and entertained. If you have already done so, then you are awesome.

How To Make A Watercolor Painting

(PROLOGUE: Attention: Visitors from Pinterest. Thanks so much for clicking through! Please do me a favor and click here —-> YouTube <—- to subscribe to my painting and drawing tutorial channel on Youtube. It’s full of tips for your drawing and painting skills. Your support means the world to me. Best, James Akers)

Here is a little book I made for my kids that explains the basics of making your first watercolor, from what stuff you'll need to use, to what a "triad" is, to how to mix colors and build up transparent layers and make your first watercolor. It's a work in progress and very basic, but hope you enjoy and please let me know your comments.