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Western pigments for Chinese palettes
It can be difficult for people outside of Asia to purchase paint for Chinese brush painting. While Marie's Chinese Watercolors are often available, their quality and age varies tremendously. I have found in the past that Maries paint is adequate and the price is so much cheaper that it does make sense for students. Locally Marie's is less than $1 (cheaper than Shanghai!!!) while Western watercolors are at least 10 times that. They are cheap enough you can take a chance on them if you can find them.
From my own experience and others the following Western colors are useful for Chinese brush painting, especially landscapes:
Daniel Smith Indigo
Daniel Smith Burnt Sienna
Daniel Smith New Gamboge
Holbein Antique Red Orange
Holbein Compose Green #2 - replaces traditional #3 green
Holbein Verditer Blue - replaces traditional #3 blue
Daniel Smith Indigo and Burnt Sienna work very well together, the indigo is much richer than the Maries Indigo. You can make some quite lovely paintings using just these two and ink.
Holbein Compose Green #2 and Verditer Blue mix well together and are very useful for traditional green and blue paintings.
I can't tell any difference between watercolors purchased in China and these other than quality, they both take to the paper in the same fashion and both can be traditionally wet mounted,
Jim
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Photograph your art
Once you start painting, it's nice to be able to take photos of your unmounted work. One disadvantage to Chinese/Japanese style of papers is that they wrinkle up after painting, a problem that Western watercolor papers don't have. Cameras with built in flash are well suited for this.
- Temporarily pin or clip your art to a plain, white or off-white non-reflective surface.
- Darken the room as much as possible, especially any lights that strike your painting sideways.
- Set your camera to its lowest ASA if it has such a setting.
- If your camera and space allows for it, take the picture at about 1/3 zoomed out.
- If your camera is a tablet or phone, don't fill the entire frame with your picture, leave about 1/3 of the frame empty.
- Photograph away! I often use Picasa for straightening, cropping and any other adjustments.
Nasty wrinkle
Same area with flash, better!