My First Watercolor Painting | Mental Health Benefits of Painting

Mental Benefits of Painting

Stress Reliever

Optimistic Attitude

Gaining confidence and self-steem

Improves memory

Being keen observer

Improves creativity

Materials I used

• Fabriano water color paper
• Cheap set of watercolors
• Paint brushes
• Tissue paper
• Unipin 0.7 and 0.2
• Pencil
• Masking tape

I highly suggest to use a watercolor paper instead of a regular paper if you don't want your painting to bleed to death.

Preparations

And before I start this, I have to prepare everything I needed first.
As you can see on the pictures, I only have some limited colors available on my color palette. So I have to mixed the colors that I have here to create the perfect tone that I needed.

And I also, did my gradient test on a piece of paper similar to the paper that I'll be using for the painting. It's also advisable to grab a clean tissue paper to damp off the excess water from your brushes.

And now, I'm ready to sketch. So, I grabbed a pen and drew what's on my mind.

Painting Process

So first I applied a lightest color first into the skin of my drawing. I planned to color first the lightest then I will apply a darker tone later.

I was afraid at first to start painting cause I might ruin the whole drawing. I don't even know if I was doing it right but I just kept on applying colors to it until I'm satisfied.

I applied the same method for the color of her hair which is a tone of light blue.

Before I proceeded to the next step I taped the sides of the paper using a masking tape. This way you can prevent the watercolors from spreading too much on your paper, plus it adds a great border on your painting.

And then for the background I applied the method called "wet on wet". It is a watercolor painting process in which you wet the paper first with a thin layer of clean water and then apply the water color into it. I think this method is perfect when creating clouds.

I just mixed a couple of colors using the "wet on wet method" until I covered the whole background.

And then I used a unipin 0.7 and 0.2 to draw the outlines of the drawing.

And once I'm done, I let it dry first before removing tapes. It is best to let your painting dry first before removing the tape to avoid ruining your whole artwork.

And it is done. I'm so proud to see my signature on this painting. haha

This is the whole image of the painting.

To tell you the truth, I was really happy with the result of my first try. I'm really glad that I had finished this one cause I have a habit of not finishing what I started.

I scanned the whole painting and upload it into my computer but it flattened the image and it looks dull but I'm gonna share it to you guys anyways.

And that is it. Thank you so much guys for reading this post and for being a part of a first in my life. Hope you like this first watercolor painting of mine. I'm gonna share every progress that I make on this kind of medium cause I want you all to be a part of me.
Thank you so much. Maraming Salamat po!!!!