(deep breath) Woo! That was a lot of picture taking. Lol. But here is the tute for the watercolor painting.
It's very easy and very fun. I NEVER paint, and I could do it, so have no fear.Ok, heres what you need.
*Printer
*Black paint
*Assorted size painbrushes (be sure to get a teeny tiny one, you'll be glad you did!)
*Watercolor kit
*Regular paper, fancy painting paper, don't matta!
*Some good background music
I'm going to make a portrait of myself to give to my mom for her birthday.
Heres the picture of yours truely.
Ok so for the "stencil" you can make it real easy on yourself and use Photoshop and I think they have a magic stencil button. I have never used Photoshop (gasp, I know right) So I just used my computer's picture editor and took away all the saturation, then played around with the brightness, contrast and midtone. Mess around with your picture till you get something that looks like a stencil. I messed around with mine for quite a few minutes. Heres what I got and printed it out.
Now I took a piece of paper, put it on top, then taped both to my window to trace....and please....make sure it's daytime
Your now going to take a pencil and trace around the parts that your going to paint black. And the parts on your picture that need shading, shade lightly with your pencil.
Ok not bad so far right? Your doing good. Now you'll see you have a weird looking version of your picture.
Your now ready to paint. Set up your little station. It helped me a lot to tape the original stencil up so I can glance at it to help me with the shading.
Take your bigger brush and start painting the big pieces. Be careful, don't rush, and pay attention. So you'll have something like this.
Take your medium and tiny brushes and fill in everything. Be neat, don't rush and sing a long to your tunes. Remain calm, it can get kinda frustrating with the tiny brush.
Halfway there...
Finished?.....awesome.
Now heres the hardest part in my opinion. The shading. Of course you don't have to add shading if you don't want to. The picture looks good either way. I used a small brush and dipped just the tip with paint. I then brushed it on a piece of scratch paper once, then LIGHTLY rubbed it on where I wanted shading.
I recommend practicing on a piece of paper before you start, you'll see what I mean. So heres my picture finished and with my shading job. I decided not to paint my heart necklace, because in the stencil, it doesn't look like a heart anymore.
Get your big brushed rinsed well. The watercolor part is fun. Play around with colors. I like to add two to three on mine. My base color I chose blue. Oh remember though, don't get the paper too wet. Easy on the water you add to the watercolor paints.
I then added some green here and there. Hard to see in the picture I know.
Last but not least, I added a splash of yellow in three places to make it pop.
YAY!!!!! YOUR DONE! And be proud of your masterpiece. Let it dry and frame if you wish.
Here it is. I also made one of my sister along the way.Be proud of yourself, and please share if you make one.
Thank you for reading. I hope my directions were ok.
