Essential Watercolor Drawing Strategies for Beginners
Nov 06, 2023Drawing is an essential part of the watercolor process.
It's the foundation of a painting, and it acts as a sort of outline for the rest of the watercolor process... so it can feel intimidating.
But it doesn't have to!
My hope is with this video and blog, I demystify the drawing process a bit and leave you with some tangible tips that will improve your watercolor drawing.
3 Important Watercolor Drawing Strategies
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We need to try to let go of some of our idea of perfection when it comes to drawing. Remember, you're not creating a flawless representation of what is there in real life. You're not creating a blueprint or some type of important document that has to be done in a very exact way.
You simply need an outline and a guideline for your painting process.
Here are three important tips for you to improve your watercolor drawings.
1. Keep Your Hand on Your Watercolor Paper When Drawing.
As you render a scene, the temptation can be to draw a little part here and then move over to another area and draw another part, haphazardly putting together your watercolor scene.
The problem with this approach is that we need to see our drawing as one whole connected piece.
Keeping your hand on the paper as you draw will help you to become more accurate. This approach will help you to better understand the relationships between different shapes of the scene. As a result, you'll find it easier to:
- draw shapes in proportion to one another,
- draw lines with correct angles, and
- loosen up in your drawing.
2. Draw Shapes Instead of Objects When You Draw For Watercolor.
Our concept of a particular object - the image that comes to mind when you say a word like car, house, flower, or mountain - can get in the way of drawing a scene accurately.
If you pull from this preconceived image, you start to render the object the way you think it should look rather than how it actually looks. Try instead to study the shapes of the object in your reference photo or real-life scene. When you can see things as shapes instead of objects, you are better able to see what is actually in front of you, and your watercolor drawings will become more accurate.
I found this particularly helpful when I started to paint cars. I would automatically have an idea of how they should look because they are such a familiar object - something I've seen my whole life. So I would try to draw cars from memory, which can be really tricky. Once I started to think about them just as shapes and look at how they're situated in the scene (relative to other objects), I was able to render them more realistically.
Rather than depicting every little thing in the scene the way you imagine it should be, pay close attention to the shapes that are actually in front of you.
3. Learn When to Make Dark Lines (and When to Draw Lightly) to Support your Watercolor Painting Process.
Certain areas of your painting should not have dark lines, and other parts should not have lines that are too light. But how do you know which to use? Here is some guidance that should help.
In places where you'll be painting with the lightest values, you will not want any heavy pencil lines. This is because you don't want them to show through.
So, for instance, if you're painting a formation of clouds, you won't want to draw a lot of hard lines up in the sky. Instead, draw some very light pencil lines to give you the feel and the layout of those clouds. If you mark too heavily there, they will stick out through thin washes.
In areas of the painting where you need to have a little more precision, you might need to draw a little bit darker and add a little more detail. If you draw too lightly in these areas, you may end up covering up your drawing with your first wash. If you aren't able to see it, then you will lose track of your drawing and your painting suffer.
Watercolor Demo: Watch My Drawing Process
Do you want to see my watercolor drawing process in action? The video at the top of this page gives you an in-depth demo of the drawing for this watercolor painting. Check it out and let me know how these tips help you to draw a more accurate guide for your watercolor scene.