Come with me on a creative journey exploring intuitive art doodles over your watercolors in this uplifting and comforting color immersion tutorial. As in most of my other videos, we will use calming and artistic techniques to lift your spirits and fill your life with positive joy. We are all constantly navigating through challenging emotions and in this step-by-step watercolor and doodling session, we’ll paint a soothing background of circles and adorn it with uplifting doodle motifs, beautifully enhanced with touches of gold and white.

If you’re seeking a moment of tranquility, creativity has the ability to improve your well-being both physical and mental.  This tutorial will help you to embrace your own creativity whilst remaining easy and unchallenging, so you can find happiness by stepping into the magical world of art. Now’s the moment to get started! 

Talking about Paint

I have been painting with watercolors for about 60 years, starting as a child with a big paintbox and progressing through school and high school – and getting my GCE in Art along the way – the only official art qualification I have ever attained! And for all those years I have used what I would call “traditional” watercolors – the ones made by our British traditional colourmen Winsor and Newton, or George Rowney (later to become Daler-Rowney). As time went by and the UK became more involved with Europe after joining the European Union, paints made in other European countries slowly began to become available. We are talking pre-Amazon days here, when you actually went to a shop to buy the things you wanted – and Art Shops existed in most towns.

This meant that the companies such as Schmincke (Germany), Sennelier (France), Old Holland (Netherlands) and Maimeri Blu (Italy) became options. All excellent quality paints, easily as good as W&N and Daler-Rowney, I was tempted to try them all out. But at the end of the day to be quite honest, the difference is marginal. There is not really any reason to prefer one nation’s paint over another. And again, as time went by, the pigments became more homogenous, more dependent on the needs of mass manufacturers’ colouring requirements, and less dependent on the taste and quirks of individual colourmen. No longer was Indian Yellow sourced from elephant urine, or Carmine made from dead cochineal insect shells. All synthetic colours have become the norm and are standardised everywhere.

How it came to pass that I was ignorant of the Japanese interest and skill in watercolor manufacture I shall never know. But after I had started my YouTube channel, about 3 years ago, I started to do a little research into alternatives to the traditional paints, and came across Gansai Tambi paint, as made by Kuretake. This was an eye-opener.

Kuretake Gansai Tambi is something of a revelation. It falls somewhere in between transparent watercolor and the more opaque watercolour known in the west as gouache. It has a rich, even coverage and comes in beautiful jewel-like colours which lend themselves to the creation of work of much more impact and colour strength than the traditional palette from the archaic manufacturers.

Since coming across these paints I have probably used them more than my traditional palette. You don’t need to mix colours as much as you do with the traditional palette, although if you choose to mix you can do so with impunity. The colours seem to be happy to mix without going dull like so many of the W&N colours do. Example: if you want a nice soft grey, mix W&N ultramarine with burnt sienna. This unlikely sounding mixture can produce a strong blackish colour but if diluted it is ideal for clouds. You don’t get the same effect if you mix those two colours of Kuretake. I feel you obtain more of a mix which still shows the blue and the brown. This could be my eyes, but that’s the feeling I have.

To conclude, if you haven’t tried Kuretake Gansai Tambi paints yet, I recommend you do, if you are open to a new experience. I don’t think you’ll regret it!

Materials

Viviva Watercolor 16 pan set https://tinyurl.com/vivivacolors

Coliro Gold Paint https://amzn.to/3z732JF

Uniball Signo Gold Gel Pens: https://amzn.to/3NAqXJC

Uniball Signo White Gel Pens https://amzn.to/3NPTqJd

Tombow Fudenosuke Brush Pens https://amzn.to/3QIcn2N

Princeton Aqua Elite Brush, Round, size 12 https://amzn.to/3RqtTcb

Princeton Aqua Elite Synthetic Kolinsky Brush, Round, size 8 https://amzn.to/42P6whE

MEEDEN Ceramic Tray Palette. https://tinyurl.com/meeden-ceramic-tray-palette

Meeden 100% Cotton Watercolor Paper  https://tinyurl.com/meeden-watercolor-block 

***Use code DIANE10 for 10% extra off Meeden Art supplies***