How I make a watercolor painting

Hey everyone! I hope you've all had a lovely Easter 🐇🐇

This week, I want to share with you the process of how I made this month's birb print with watercolors 😊

1. Start with a sketch

I start by doing some small sketches until I get something I like. You can see the one to the left that I abandoned. What I'm trying to do at this stage is test out the composition and colors and by working small you can focus on the big picture rather than the small details. 

2. Bring the sketch into Procreate

I'll then use my iPad to take a photo of my tiny sketch and import it into Procreate.

3. Outline my sketch

In Procreate, I will then make outlines around my sketch to help define the shapes that I want in my final piece.

4. Transfer the sketch to watercolor paper

I then bring my sketch into an app called TraceTable where I will trace my outline onto watercolor paper.

TraceTable is an amazing app that will let you import an image and then lock the image in place so you can trace over it. I used to Procreate to do my tracing, but sometimes my image would accidentally shift around which was super frustrating. The app isn't free, but for $1, I find it to be totally worth it 😊

5. Go straight into painting!

With my sketch ready to go, I then get straight into painting! I've found this technique to be a lot faster for me to transfer a sketch to a new sheet of paper. The other plus is that if I mess up or want to make another version, I can easily trace my sketch onto a new piece of paper.

You can of course do this without an iPad! Before I got my iPad, I used to scan my sketch, scale it up in Photoshop, print it out, then use a light table (or bright window) to trace over it. However, I now just do this cause it's a lot faster for me to get into the painting process 😁

Let me know if you have any questions and I hope you like the little process video too!