The Easiest Way to Start Painting With Watercolor Inks!

Watercolor inks look amazing but knowing where to start is the hard part. When I painted what I'm going to show you, I had zero plan. You'll see I made a bunch of mistakes and I still ended up with something beautiful that I know anyone can enjoy, especially if you're just getting started or you just want to paint something fun. Hi, I'm François. Welcome or welcome back to my channel. Your go-to place for watercolor art that looks both loose and realistic with minimal effort and minimal supplies. The day that I picked up my watercolor inks again after many years, I was in the mood to paint but I just didn't want to use my traditional watercolor so I was looking for something new. And I had no plan. This was a just play kind of day, no overthinking. So I wet my paper, I grabbed the pipette from the pink ink bottle, and I started dropping color. It bloomed and it spread out beautifully, and as you may be able to tell from the video, it felt like magic from the get-go. Then came the purples. I didn't even like the way that came out and that's my mistake number one. Check you like the colors you're going to use before you get started. Then I added some blue and mistake number two showed up because I was so unprepared and there I quickly realized that the pads should not touch the paper unless you want to risk weird permanent marks. Lesson learned. And with that, the importance of experimenting and allowing all the mistakes to happen at once. And that's where you'll learn the most outside of a video like this one. I grabbed a flat brush to help the colors merge, and that was stunning, so bright and bold. That's one thing I instantly loved about inks the first time I used them, the unmatched vibrancy. They don't fade out like traditional watercolors, but on the downside, they're also strong. Very strong. Which brings me to mistake number three that I made, which was I added more ink. Like I would with watercolors, layering gradually except that with inks you don't need near as much. My sky was getting oversaturated, there was way too much going on. I also forgot to preserve any paper whites and these inks spread at the speed of light, another thing I learned under 5 minutes of painting. Once they're down, they're down. If you want white space, add much less and drop it Farther away. And then chaos. I wanted to add more blue but the bottle felt empty and since those art philosophy inks were very old I thought that it might have dried so naturally I just shook the bottle directly over the paper and it was a mess. At this point I knew I needed a new plan so I forgot about my reference. I tilted the sheet to let the color run and I sprayed water to dilute things a little. Then I started lifting pigment with my brush but that was slow and tedious so I decided to splatter water everywhere. At this point honestly I was just thinking why not just let go, create whatever effects and then we'll see. So then I dropped some black ink to cover the areas I didn't like. It added contrast and honestly it looked cool. Very dramatic because it helped balance the piece with all those bright and light colors. As I dried everything, I kept wondering what I might paint with this, and that's when I had the idea. This could become a galaxy. And by the way, if you want to watch the entire process in real time with my voiceover, with the struggles that I had in the beginning and then what happened afterwards, I invite you to join my Patreon where you get to access hundreds of videos on watercolor and watercolor pencils and you can learn from this painting and many others for a small monthly fee and you can cancel the subscription at any time you wish. Now back to the accidental masterpiece. And the thing about galaxies that I really like is that they're great for beginners. Great exercise and I've vouched for it several times in my videos on this channel because that's how I started painting with watercolors. I painted a lot of galaxies and skies and I find that you don't need to hyper focus on a specific result and a lot of the times it comes out impressive and beautiful. To improve that background, since I hadn't really planned on it being a galaxy in the start, I decided to add a planet so it looks more interesting. And I found a reference photo on Unsplash for inspiration, but I had a problem. Where do I place the planet on this wild, chaotic background? It didn't make sense anywhere. So here's the trick. And you can see it here. Just rotate your sheet. Turn it around until something clicks. Once I found the perfect spot, I just grabbed a roll of masking tape to shape the planet. And I didn't even draw it with a pencil. Instead, I just used a damp brush to lift the pigment and reveal the actual circle. So I'm really not trying to overcomplicate anything and instead make it as simple as I can. Then with a paper towel and some water, I lifted more and more ink until the planet stood out. After that, I added more color inside the planet to make it pop. Because that contrast between the planet and the background I knew was going to be key in a piece like this. I also knew I needed both depth and vibrancy to achieve that and also light, very light colors, so I brought in some white. And if you've never tried gouache on top of watercolor or inks, you're missing out. White gouache in particular looks incredible in galaxy scenes and it can save a failed painting too as you'll see from the rest of this video. So I just outlined parts of the planet in white then I softened some edges with a damp brush. It gave me a nice mix of bold and subtle edges. Then I just splattered more gouache over the wet planet surface and I just watched it do its thing. And you can see gorgeous textures formed just like craters or moon surfaces and that's why this is so perfect for a galaxy. Final touch? Stars, of course! And I spattered gouache across the sky, then I used a coarse brush made for oil paint to get the spatters to come out better, and I even added a few bigger stars by hand for fun. Voila! What started as a sky gone wrong turned into a colorful glowing galaxy that I barely planned and barely thought through. And so it came out beautiful, the process was playful and so satisfying. And yes, it's absolutely beginner friendly. So if you've ever tried watercolor inks before, let me know in the comments. I'm super curious. And if you want to see more of For this type of art, just type more watercolor inks. in the comments and i'll know to make it happen and actually i'm also thinking of trying Dr PH Martin's inks next including their white liquid ink in place of the gouache so let me know should i go for it thank you so much for watching and see you next time