Day 16 : #30x30DirectWatercolor2019 : All the Water in the World is Connected
Here’s another video replay of the sketching process.
I find the sketching phase extremely important. Because I’m making the watercolor all-in-one-go, I really need a clear idea of where the lights and darks are before the brush touches paper. I’m not sure it would be possible to make watercolor entirely from nothing. You’d have to be fantastically lucky, or be drawing something you knew absolutely by heart.
Well, I suppose – similar to drawing directly in ink – you’d have to progress with tiny marks at first. Measuring out space, placing elements, and only then closing shapes. I guess – once you put your mind to it you can do anything.
But it’s much easier to just mess around in digital ink! You can push pixels until they’re in the right place.
Citizen Sketcher 
Marc, help me. I have the utmost repsect for you, and your posts have helped and inspired over the years. I am strugeling to see digital as watercolor. It seem to me more like the difference between oil and acrylic, which I paint on canvas with. Oil and acrylic may get the same reulsts but they are different mediums. So it seems like digital and watercolor are different mediums, even if they produce some similar results. What am I missing?
Hey Terry – I only use the digital for the rough sketch. It’s a nice way to make a lot of drawings from the imagination very quickly. Think of it like charcoal drawing with no mess and infinite erasing. :) Then I paint the watercolor looking at my sketch in the same way as I’d look at a photo or an actual view.