How to Use a Coloring Book for Watercolor Painting
We used to think coloring books were just for kids. The movement to create coloring books for adults picked up speed in these past few years. You can find thousands of coloring books on Amazon. They’re designed to get us to start making marks on paper. However, you might be thinking, why do I care? I’m a painter! White paper can be the biggest challenge to getting started. Coloring books take away the most intimidating part and activate the creative side of your brain.
“Every canvas is a journey all its own.” - Helen Frankenthaler
You can you use them as a guide for your sketches before you paint with watercolors. I’ll show you the step by step process of a simple hack for watercolor painting. I’m sharing this with you because I created my own coloring book just for this purpose. It goes along with the watercolor course, and you can use it to create your own beautiful paintings, as you're learning the medium for the first time.
When I began painting with watercolors, the sketch was the most intimidating thing to overcome. Once the shapes are drawn on paper, you have something to work with. You can dive right into mixing colors and experimenting. Often the white-paper syndrome kicks in for students and they don’t know what to draw, or keep reworking their drawing. The white paper paralysis can cause any painter to get stuck.
Coloring Books for Florals
The floral calm coloring book works great if you want to paint flowers. I’ll be adding to this collection of coloring books, so students can pick any subject they want to learn how to paint and get started.
Sketching on the Lightbox for Coloring
Transferring a Drawing from a Coloring Book
The coloring book published on Amazon for adults can be used as a template for watercolor painting. Watch the video below to see my Lightbox technique. FYI — you don’t have to own a Lightbox. I own the Wafter 2 which is a little more pricey, but I love how large the Lightbox area is for sketching. However, if you do want to spend the money right now, you can do the same thing with a window that has light coming through it. However, if you intend to do this technique all the time, then you might want to invest in one. They’re great for transferring your own sketches from paper to paper. Tracing paper is also a great tool that I can cover for watercolor painting in a following video. All of these tools make you a better painter.
Other Lightbox Methods for Transfer
Windows work great for tracing drawings onto paper. You can tape your paper to a window with the sketch below it. The light coming through the window will allow you to see the lines through your watercolor paper. Tracing is often frowned upon in the art world. It’s viewed as stealing amongst artists. You should never trace someone else’s work and pretend it is your own. However, I sometimes trace photos I take with my iPhone, and this I perfectly okay! You can do the same. I encourage you to take photos while you are out in nature and then use those to create art. That is another reason I provided you with the free photos group on Gab. You can use any of these photos to create artwork. I wanted to give artists who need inspiration something to get them started painting.
It’s also important to remember that we never start out being phenomenal artists. It’s a process and involves a lot of practice and experimentation. We see attributes of other artists work and try out their process or style. That is perfectly okay on your journey to finding who you are as a unique artist.
“Nobody is born with a style or a voice. We don't come out of the womb knowing who we are. In the beginning, we learn by pretending to be our heroes. We learn by copying.”
― Austin Kleon, Steal Like an Artist: 10 Things Nobody Told You About
I encourage you to keep experimenting. Use the tools I have provided to find yourself and jump start a painting. Sometimes the hardest part is putting a mark on blank paper. I’m giving these tricks to artists, because I wish someone had shared them with me when I was starting out. Go out into the world and chance your inspiration with an iPhone and then trace the shape of the found flowers using the Lightbox method I showed you in the video above. I’d love to see what you create. Please post your paintings in the Gab group and share them with the community.