EMMS' watercolors section

I have been painting with watercolors for a little over 10 years now. In 2010, I got into watercolor, all by myself, by going to buy a box of watercolor downstairs from my house. The years that followed are described in my blog. The site was created in 2009, to present the figurines that I painted, because I was initially a figurinist. Some pictures remain on this article. I thus learned the use of oil paint, acrylic, and a little sculpture.

Why watercolor rather than other media? I believe it is for spontaneity. Being an amateur, I paint mainly on weekends, and it's rewarding to be able to paint in one go. I hesitated to take lessons. We certainly move faster when being guided. As I started in Moscow, there was no shortage of a watercolor school. But I preferred to learn on my own, by documenting myself in many books, following videos, or copying artists that I admire. For a preview, take a look at In the way of , or the Barbarian Horseman by Frazetta, and again Wonderful world by Benjamin. The Emms.fr site reports on all these inspirations: the journal Art de l'Aquarelle, of which I am a faithful reader, the watercolorists who are also authors of watercolor books.

Over time, I implemented a production technique, between digital and watercolor.

1. I prepare my drawings on digital media. I have bought a state-of-the-art tablet in 2014 , and after a few weeks of tuning, I used it as a drawing board. This is exactly what I needed, to adjust the details of proportion, to gauge the colorizations.
2. Then I transfer the marks to my sheet of paper. I'm kind of freed from drawing, and can focus on the actual watercolor.

This way of working allowed me to carefully compose my drawings. In digital, I can center, invert, return to a drawing. For the characters, I check the proportions and angles of view with a 3D software, I spent hours there. And for the colors, I first focus on the values: the contrasts between light and dark areas. For about 2 years, I have been doing this study with hatching on my graphics tablet.
Then comes the watercolor. In some studies, several months go by before taking out the first brush. I repeated the same tables sometimes 5 to 8 times, but it happens to me less and more often. I know my pigments, the production techniques, and in most cases, I validate my watercolor on the first try.
I use quite a few pigments, in principle 3 or 4 tubes on the same table, and per period always the same. Covering or transparent colors, applied in one or more passes, it depends. I really like singing grays, which tend towards a color, and come as a complementary reminder of another color affirmed on the sheet. These principles are studied according to the publications of watercolorists, which I find in specialized journals. I then enjoy sharing this mode of creation in articles, on the site of course, and in PDF documents which can be shared.

Because I don't paint alone. With small steps, I found accomplices, to carry out multi media projects . Put a watercolor into an image, add music to it. Associate a young designer on a set of drawings, put colors on a song or a piece of music . I definitely spend more time collaborating, video-composing than painting. And in several of these projects, I do not make a watercolor but 5 or 9, or 12. To be honest, we are in no rush to finish these projects, and we are working to make them last, bounce back as we please.