Hoping Tangela will see this because she seems pretty interested in it!

I LOVE these three mediums....but I use them differently to most people.

Watercolour
I cannot for the life of me use watercolour like it should be used...you know, with white showing through and perhaps some water marks. I have tried, and I love the challenge and idea of a wet canvas...but it's just not something my mind can compute without some sort of formal instruction I think.

So I use them very very thick, almost like acrylic paints.
http://www.creativeburrow.org/comics/annie/
http://www.creativeburrow.org/comics/granny/


Tempera
Tempera is my most favourite thing ever but ONLY in cake form. The powdered cakes work like watercolour but they have thick bold colours. I LOVE them. I don't have an example but if I could afford lots of tempera I would have a room filled with it ha ha.


Ink
I LOVE INK!! Ink is one of those things that somehow came naturally to me. This is the first thing I created with ink:




Ink just has a different feel to it. It's not heavy but it is permanent...and you can adjust it. If I want it darker I use more ink, if I want it lighter I add more water. I often have a palette with water in it and I add some drops of ink to each one, gauging the ink off slowly. It's so versatile.

I've not tried colour inks yet, only black, white, and sepia. Well I haven't actually tried white but I own it. The sepia is absolutely fabulous. It's "just" brown ink but it has a completely different feel and I adore it!

What do you guys think of your experience with these 3?

I love using watercolor, even though it usually comes out blotchy. Rather than use them like acrylics, I often go for the wet-on-dry control, which basically paints one item on a blank background, which is pretty amateurish but I think it's cute.

For more refined details, I either mix the media (the image, that is, not the substances -- that would turn badly) with chalk, or a wax resist such as white crayon (or other colored crayon), oil pastel, or what my art teacher called "frisket" which is a paint-on rubber cement. For that last one especially, though, you've got to have a good mind for negative space which (for those who've forgotten 8th grade art class, or never covered it) is basically shifting your awareness of an image to what isn't there rather than focusing on the object itself.

I think watercolor can very much be a negative space medium, which can be a dificult state of mind to get into because negative space can be very counter-intuitive...

I really want to get into tempera paints! There's something so natural-feeling about it.

Inks, though... I need to get more confident with lines and shading. I just can't abide how if the line's there, it's there...forever, unless you get one of those erasers that also rip up the paper. While watercolor should work the same way, like if a blotch you don't want is there then it's there for ever you can't cover it up like with oil paint... I don't know, my mind and attitude is just more relaxed with watercolors as opposed to ink.

Yeah Tempera is amazing, DO NOT get the child tempera's though... they are like plastic and feel and look HORRIFYING.

I need to get used to the negative space aspect, it's a challenge for me!

I've used ink a lot, but mostly for calligraphy when I write letters to family. As for watercolor my grandfather used to be very good at it before he passed. I've never seen any but from what I am told it was amazing. Maybe I inherited some sort of watercolor gene? I might have to see.

I really like how you used ink to make a picture with it, Bunny !  I have only used ink for writing, and it never even occurred to me to use it with a brush,and do black and white pictures that way.
I used to use watercolors, but I only used them like you would a tempura paint and not with the washed out look that most water-colors usually have.
I don't even really like that look, although I have seen pictures done in watercolor that I liked.  I think I would have probably like them even better if they looked more like an actual painting then the water color painting.
That being said, I have not actually used any of them for a long , long time; except when I went to the painting class with my daughter a couple of weeks ago. We all painted along with the instructor, and all had a very different impression of the picture that she showed us to start with. I did have a good time thought, and it started me thinking about getting some paints and a sketchbook and trying it all again.

You should definitely do it again! And take pictures to show us!! I like that I've met someone who paints similarly to me!

I do have a picture of the one that we all painted when I went to the painting class last month with my daughter, Robin. I will have to sign up for one of the places like you are talking about that you can put pictures on and then upload the link.
I just have never had any reason to do something like that before, and I have no idea how it works at all.
Years ago, I had a whole little portfolio of pictures that I had drawn or painted, but it has long since disappeared.  Drawing horses was probably my favorite, but I also like to draw portraits from photographs. I had one of Audie Murphy and one of Yul Brynner that were my favorites.
I always wonder if I could learn to do it again ?
Maybe one of these days , I will try it again.

I think it's not so much re-learning, but remembering and becoming in touch with the technique again . You can do it!!

I have never, ever liked watercolors. I can't work with the wet canvas and while I like to utilize negative space in my artwork, I have trouble deciding where to leave white and then keeping it white. The lack of control is incredibly frustrating to me. I only have experience with watercolor paints that come in a pallet. I do have tube watercolors I bought on accident one day but never used them. I may give them a chance one day but I'm not really interested in it at the moment.

I've never painted with tempera. I was studying about painting with egg tempera for a little while until I discovered I have an egg allergy...

As for Ink...I never thought of painting with it! I wasn't even aware that there was such a thing as ink painting! That's a beautiful piece you posted Bunny. You're very skilled at working with light and dark. I also like the extra dimension from the angled view with the thick dark line outlining the woman's face and neck. I'll have to experiment with this medium one day...

I love drawing with ink felt tips or fountain pens and using my watercolors much like I used crayons as a kid, just to color stuff in. I'm trying to learn to balance my use of them together more, it seems like I could spend a lifetime learning this! Reading some Claudia Nice books for ideas.

Tempera...I don't think I've used that since middle school, I barely remember the feel of it! Do they sell cheap sets I could try to reacquaint myself with them?

HearingInk (08:45pm Mon, Sep 15, 2014)

I have never, ever liked watercolors. I can't work with the wet canvas and while I like to utilize negative space in my artwork, I have trouble deciding where to leave white and then keeping it white. The lack of control is incredibly frustrating to me. I only have experience with watercolor paints that come in a pallet. I do have tube watercolors I bought on accident one day but never used them. I may give them a chance one day but I'm not really interested in it at the moment.

Same issue here, which is why I use them really thick like acrylics. I never paint on a wet canvas either because I can't control it .

HearingInk (08:45pm Mon, Sep 15, 2014)

As for Ink...I never thought of painting with it! I wasn't even aware that there was such a thing as ink painting! That's a beautiful piece you posted Bunny. You're very skilled at working with light and dark. I also like the extra dimension from the angled view with the thick dark line outlining the woman's face and neck. I'll have to experiment with this medium one day...

Actually it's a 3D piece, I cut them out and raised them up on foam ha ha. It was extremely hard cause it was thick and the exacto knife was double the length.

I had never thought of it either until my art teacher set it in front of me and told me to have fun. It was indian ink. Should have seen my face.

Wordee (12:18am Tue, Sep 16, 2014)

Tempera...I don't think I've used that since middle school, I barely remember the feel of it! Do they sell cheap sets I could try to reacquaint myself with them?

I think it depends on country, and if you want cheap do NOT buy the liquid ones because they are plastic pretend ones and you will shoot who ever sold them to you (trust me it will happen lol). The kiddy tempera paints are always plastic.

You should try for some cake tempera. It has the most amazing feel and the pigments are so rich.

Not sure if this will turn out or not, but here is the picture of Robin and i with our pictures from the painting class. You can see that even though we both copied the instructor showing us what to paint , and how to do it, both of our pictures came out very different.
There was a picture of the whole class, and when you look at that, it is amazing the difference in each picture, and what our impressions were of each object that we were painting in the scene.

So awesome, I LOVE IT!!

Robin messaged me last night and asked if i wanted to go to another painting class with her again tonight; and I (of course) accepted the invitation eagerly.
So, tonight, we will be painting a cow. I have drawn and painted a lot of horses (years ago), but if I ever had any cows in the pictures, I really don't remember that. My cow might come out looking more like a horse, and have a nice long flowing mane and tail.....
Well, probably not; but it was an interesting thought, anyway. If we have pictures; I will post one so everyone can see how our cow paintings turned out.
The lessons are very interesting. The instructor starts with the background, and after that is painted, then you add the things in the foreground last.
I used to do just the opposite; I drew/painted whatever it was (usually a horse, but sometimes a person), and then I added an appropriate background behind that.
I think that working from back to front does add more depth to the picture, and it is interesting to learn how to do it.
I have been eying the art notebooks and paints when I go to Walmart; so I might have to get a cheap set and try painting for fun at home again.