How I Use Watercolors

Watercolor painting and digital are probably my favorite mediums to work with. My process with watercolors still has much room for improvement, one big one that comes to mind is using thin layers so I can build up color overtime.

I, of course, always start with a sketch! Our subject today is once again a cute little cat (Heavily inspired by my cat!).

Next I line my sketch, and put down my first layer of color.

Recently I have started using a dip pen and waterproof ink so I’m still getting used to using the pen and I used the thinnest nibs I had for the line art and hatching. For the hatching I used less ink on my pen nib to achieve thinner lines to shade the grey parts of the cat, and used a normal amount of ink for the spots and stripes for the darker areas.

The larger nib is for a future step!


The following step I shade some more, and recently I have been trying to incorporate cooler colors on areas further away from the viewer, however my initial layer had been a little too thick so it doesn’t show as much as I would like it to.

I used a slightly larger pen nib to add a thick line around the cat.

I had a lot of fun drawing this little guy, and this helped me find areas I can work on in the future! I never really found it as discouraging to notice mistakes in my work, honestly I find it just encourages me to draw and paint even more so I can work on my skills more!

I hope everyone has a wonderful week!

Esther K.

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