A question about the preparation process

In this post about gouache, I was asked the following question: "What is your prep process before you start painting? Do you sketch it out in pencil? Do you believe in tracing?"

I absolutely believe in tracing.

Not all the time. Strictly in terms of portraiture tracing is awfully convenient, because drawing an accurate and recognizable face takes me far more time than I can afford. A project for school or for sale or something where I feel like I need to achieve some level of purity, sure, I'll hand draw it. But for something quick and small-time (like these, for instance), I'll trace.

Study of a live model from my figure-painting class in college. Oil on board. Toned background and visible pencil lines? Yes please.

For things outside of portraiture I also sketch ahead of time, but only very lightly and loosely to get a sense of composition and proportion. I rarely bother hiding my pencil lines, and you can see them in just about all my work, which manifests both my laziness and my aesthetic sense. In case I needed to say it plainly, I don't hold myself to a strict academic standard.

For Fine Doodles, I always trace due to the nature of the project. I digitally scale the original child's drawing to the size of my board, print it, tape it on one side of the board so I can fold it out of the way without losing placement between paint layers, and slip a sheet of tracing paper between them. I use Loew Cornell Transfer Paper (which I purchase through Dick Blick). I've used other brands (Sally's is terrible), and Loew Cornell is by far my favorite. I use the white kind whenever possible, as I find it to be less prone to flaking and smudging than the grey.

As for other preparatory steps, I almost always tone my support ahead of time. ("Support," if you're not in the know, is the word they use in art classes for "the thing you paint on.") Whatever is underneath will show through (whether through transparent layers or through the way you interact with the colors as you paint), so when you start with a white surface, your painting tends to look...white. Washed-out. So I give my support a thin layer of a mood color - often a neutral. If I'm working with a transparent medium, like watercolor, I have to think ahead and put frisket on whatever highlights I want to remain white.

If you're wondering what frisket is...remember the art project in elementary school where you slap down some rubber cement on your paper, put some ink or paint over the top, and then peel up the rubber cement to reveal the paper again? Frisket is that.

My only other preparatory steps are stretching any necessary paper and taping off the painting area. Leaving a nice white paper border around your painting (via tape) is the convention for aqueous media, and it just looks pretty.

Getting rid of the "art student" look

I watercolored a portrait of my son and my daughter for a quick, last-minute Christmas gift. The truth is, though, that they're not very good paintings. They both have that awful "art student" look. It's hard to identify the specific problems, but I have two practical pieces of advice for myself:

A) Don't overwork. I toyed with the portrait above for too long, got too uptight, and tried to add too many layers and scrub away old layers to atone for my mistakes. Working faster gets fresher results but requires more accuracy. In sum: practice.

This one has a fresher, less over-worked quality, but...

B) Get some contrast in there, dang it. A lot of amateur watercolors are too pale and anemic. It always dries lighter than it looks wet. Work with a higher paint-to-water ratio - more than you think you need - and perhaps pigment from the tube rather than from dry cakes will make that more natural. You can always add layers, but then you run the risk of problem A.

Phthalos: Bullies of the paint world

Mix up a batch of skin-tone. It looks a little orange, so you add some phthalo blue to neutralize it. You add just a tiny dot...and the whole pile of paint turns bright blue.

You can start over, or you can waste several pints of paint trying to turn it fleshy again.

Moral of the story: phthalo blue and phthalo green will conquer and pillage any other color on your palette. Keep them quarantined.