How to make a painting look good || Watercolor || Beginner Creative Process Pt. 2

What makes your drawings and paintings look good? In this video, I am figuring out how to make my watercolor painting pop! What is the secret? Did I plan for this painting to become a two-part video project? No. But I bumped into so many ‘unknowns’ for this painting that I simply had to take the time to learn a few things😊

◦ Website: https://commonpencil.com
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How it began
I wanted to paint an awesome looking castle that could fit in a fantasy world. So I made three concept sketches. In my third sketch, I drew from the mind instead of a reference, to see what would come out of that. Now I don’t want to burst the bubble of the mysterious hand, but I did not plan for this hand to appear. I was trying to go for stairs in the rock that led up to an entrance! At some point the stairs turned into a hand and I rolled with it. You know, life happened!  

What I learned
Colors are not nearly as important as you might think. Values are the key to controlling the look of your art! Do you feel that your creative results look a bit messy? Or do you want to learn how to create a certain atmosphere? Go learn things about values, it might help you out. A great source of information is this book: Artists’ Master series: Color & Light. But having a good look at some world-famous paintings might give you some insight as well. I had several light-bulb moments when looking at the work of one of my favorite artists: Gustave Doré, a true master of light and dark.

I really believe that values are the secret sauce to interesting looking art. Although ‘secret’ is the wrong word. The information is easy enough to find if you know where to look. Maybe the True Secret is that anyone can get good at making their creative works look visually attractive, as long as they are willing to learn.

Uh oh, my mind is slowly creeping towards the inevitable question: What is good art? Or even, what is art? A topic that has already been discussed so many times by so many people that I don’t know if it is worth spending time on.. The answer will always be: it depends. But I have not spend much time discussing this yet. You know what, I might just give the topic some thought. What do you think is art? What is it not? Let me know what you think!

Also, want to read more? Visit my blog!
◦ https://commonpencil.com/blog

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Music:
* Dreamy Flashback by Kevin MacLeod is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 licence. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/...
Source: http://incompetech.com/music/royalty-...
Artist: http://incompetech.com/
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Filmed & edited by myself, learning as I go!✨

• #howto_style
• #watercolour
• #whimsical
• #shading