two-part tutorial this week we'll start with all the supplies that you need to

be successful with watercolor painting and then a few weeks from now I'm going

to produce a techniques watercolor video so look out for that one and make sure

you watch until the end of today's tutorial because there is a super

giveaway this is an awesome prize pack especially if you're a watercolor artist

or getting started in watercolor so watch to the end of the video for

that

Guys I just want to take a sec to say thank you to everyone who's supporting

me on patreon you guys are awesome and this week because we're doing watercolor

supplies I've released a whole pack of watercolor clipart it's hand painted by

me flowers leaves everything you need to create beautiful watercolor inspired

blog headers landing pages you can use this for your social media graphics so

go get that now it's all available for a $2 donation on my patreon site so I'm

going to start today's video with what I think is the most important of

watercolor painting supplies and that is watercolor paper now even if you're

painting with watercolor paints that you made out of kool-aid or coffee or I

don't know whatever you still want good quality watercolor paper because part of

the painting process is really all about how the paint absorbs into that paper

and as we all know thin paper like computer paper buckles when it gets wet

and that's what you really don't want so we're gonna have a long talk of a good

watercolor paper now I just received these beautiful

pads of watercolor paper from Canson there are a hundred percent cotton and

we'll talk about what that means and I have one to give away as part of our

prize pack for today so make sure you watch till the end of today's tutorial

for the giveaway okay so there's a lot of info out there about paper but it

doesn't need to be confusing and everything you need to know about the

paper that you're buying is contained right here on the front cover so we're

gonna sort of go through this label and demystify it so first of all what's easy

okay twelve sheets we know what that means we've got twelve pieces of paper

this one is ten by fourteen inches I do like to typically by larger pads of

paper because if it's ten by fourteen or

nine by twelve I can still cut it in half and get two useable sheets they're

four different pieces of works that's why I usually buy large and next piece

of information it says a hundred percent cotton and that means that this paper is

artist quality so paper that is pH neutral acid-free and 100 percent cotton

it's not going to deteriorate or yellow over time the way an old newspaper does

and that's important if you're selling your work so you know if you're just

painting and scanning it into the computer and making clipart or you're

just practicing you can purchase student quality paper that does contain acid and

you don't need to worry about it and you can save the money but if you're making

work that you want to hold on to that you want to pass down that you want to

sell even if you're producing prints so you're printing your work out onto

watercolor paper and you need to make sure that it's a hundred percent cotton

and so that time won't cause any trouble next piece of info 300 grams per meter

squared or a hundred and forty pound we have the weight of the paper and that

will always be listed on the front and GSM means gram per meter squared and

pounds means pounds per ream of paper so 140 pound is a pretty typical weight and

it's the one that I paint with often typically you're gonna see these four

weights ninety pounds or 190 GSM that's a really thin it's good for making

prints 140 pounds is a good weight I think it's recommended that you do

still stretch 140 pound paper and I have a video all about that that I'll link in

the description next would be 260 pound most people

would say at that point it's not as necessary to stretch your paper now it's

gonna cost you more but it's sort of nice you can skip that step and then 300

pound being typically the most commercially produced or machine

produced heaviest paper and it's very thick and dense I use 140 pound because

it's so available being one of the machine produced weights and being on

the lighter and it's gonna be a good price point and since I'm not doing

landscapes or something where I'm putting tons of color on there and doing

lots of washes I think I think I can get away without stretching it but I guess

that's a personal choice we'll call it okay and then last thing probably the

most important is this word right in the middle and that is rough and there are

three types of watercolor paper there's rough paper cold pressed and hot pressed

and those words refer to the type of surface that you're going to be painting

on now rough paper such as this has a prominent tooth and a textured surface

when you paint on it you're going to sort of get a grainy effect and you'll

get a nice pooling of the paint rough paper is good for wet on wet and it's

also good for building up washes of color it can absorb a lot of paint and

it's nice for dry brushing because of that texture if you want to do clouds or

trees you can dry brush and you can pick up that texture and use it to your

advantage one sort of drawback I guess would be that it can be hard to control

those small delicate brush strokes because the surface is so toothy so just

something to think about next we have hot pressed paper and hot

pressed is at the other end of the spectrum it has a fine grain and a

smooth surface it's not very good for building up multiple washes and colors

because very little pigment gets beyond the surface of the paper the paper sort

of gets overloaded and that has to do with how much pressure is applied in the

making of the paper and how close the cotton fibers are so you can see here on

this hot pressed paper the painting is a little bit flat the paint doesn't have

anywhere to go but on a rough paper the paint and water can seep down in between

those cotton fibers which are farther apart so it's better for ink pen and ink

for gouache and I don't use it very often because it can be hard to build up

nice amounts of color and you certainly don't get that beautiful watercolor

texture that you desire now the one positive here is that it's really nice

for scanning into a computer so if you're doing a lot of watercolor that

you want to use online say for your blog header using a hot pressed paper means

that you're not picking up all that shadowy texture in your scanner when you

go to use this as a graphic so that's something to think about but then again

you don't get the beautiful watercolor look so this one I'd consider it much

much better for pen and ink okay and then in the middle we have our

Goldilocks paper and that is cold pressed and it

is in between rough and hot pressed so you get a nice textured paper that's not

overly rough so it's good for doing small detail but it's also good for

doing washes and building up color it's the choice of many artists because it is

the best of both worlds and it's truly my favorite paper and the one that

you'll see me use over and over again on the channel the last thing you want to

consider when it comes to paper is do you want to stretch your paper it's

always a good idea to do so I'm a very lazy artist and I rarely do that but

there is one product that can help with that and that is a watercolor paper

block it's a really cool product and I have a couple here from Canson all the

sheets are stuck together to form a block and this is good for plein air

painting or when you're outdoors or on the go you can do your painting and then

you take a little exacto knife once it's dry and then you carefully cut out or

cut off that top sheet and peel it off and this will keep your your paper

fairly stretched while you're painting okay next we're going to talk about

watercolor paints now there's a lot of wonderful things about watercolors

they're fun to use they're non-toxic they're easy cleanup and of course they

mix with water which makes them beautifully translucent and very fluid

and that fluidity well and same with the translucency actually those two

attributes can make watercolor your most hated medium and for a long time I

absolutely hated watercolor first of all that translucent nature it makes it

really hard to cover up a mistake and the fluidity it means that, that paint is

liable to get away from you and you're always not quite in control of the paint

but as I get older that's what I've really come to love about watercolor is

that, that fluidity I have to enjoy the process and it's not

about always getting it right so now that's actually one of my

favorite things about this medium now there are three different types of

watercolor paints there are water colored tubes pans or disks and liquid

watercolors and there's no one type that's better than another all of them

can be purchased in artist quality or student quality or craft quality but

it's really just about choosing the one that's right for you

maybe you really love discs but then you prefer tubes when you're doing

large-scale pieces you know so all of them I think are quite equal you simply

need to decide which type is best for you and then you need to decide which

quality you're willing to pay for if you're selling your work go with artist

quality if you're practicing stick to student quality to save money and when

you're talking about artist quality you're really talking about the quality

of the pigment so watercolors are made up of finely ground pigment and that

pigment is what color's the paint and then there's other ingredients in there

and we're not going to get too detailed but there's you know something to bind

the paint there's something to moisturize it so it doesn't get dry and

gross and there might be something to help facilitate the flow of the paint

but it's really all about the quality of that pigment and a good quality pigment

means that the paint will have a nice vibrancy of color my trueness of color

and also a longevity of color so you want when you're buying artists paint

and you're spending that extra money for those paints to last on the page and

stay true over the years of course if you're just practicing and you're

getting to know this medium you're not gonna want to spend the money on artist

quality paint so hunt around for something that is a good price and has a

good pigment as well say something like this praying watercolor set part of the

problem you're gonna have is just simply that the colors are so washed out you're

not going to be able to get a real vibrancy of color but it doesn't mean

you can't make something nice them and I use this prank set to do a

wreath and it's one of my most popular videos and I will link that in the

description below as well and if you're a fan of the channel you know that

probably you can guess my favorite type and that is the pans or the discs the

reason I like them is because I find them really easy to get started with you

can sort of jump right in when you're painting with discs a lot of them come

with a palette in the lid the Sakura set does and I just mines in the kitchen in

the sink or something but that makes it really easy you can just get your water

and start mixing tubes are really nice because they you can mix up large

quantities of a color so if you're trying to mix a certain shade of blue

that doesn't come in your set it could be a hard to mix up enough of that blue

to do a whole 20 by 30 piece say you're trying to do a sky wash but when you're

working with a tube that's gonna be much easier isn't it because you can mix up a

large amount and then the nice thing about the liquid colors is that they are

very very vibrant so you can get an extremely vibrant color and they're

actually dye based so they will stain the page and they're wonderful for doing

illustration work especially okay and when it comes to paint brushes

specifically for water color again this is a big subject I could probably do a

whole video just on this but I just want to give you enough information that you

can make informed choices and you're not just sort of bogged down with info so

what should a brush do well a good brush a successful paint brush should hold a

good amount of paint and water sort of in its belly

so above the tip you want to have paint in your brush a good brush should have a

nice delicate fine point whether it's around or flat it should have a nice

fine tip and finally a good brush will allow your paint to flow onto the page

in an easy smooth fluid motion so that's sort of what you're wanting out of your

brush and then brushes if there's three things you're going to think about when

you're shopping for a brush and the first is the type so the type of hair

the size and the shape now when it comes to different types of brush bristle hair

there are animal hairs so I think gosh okay it's pig and ox and squirrel are

quite common and and goat so you'll see a lot of those and I'm pretty sure this

is the hog hair brush the the light-colored ones

I'm not into using animal brushes very often I just find they're not for me and