Episode 2: Chris Krupinski- Vocab Vocab Vocab

Watercolorist Chris Krupinski was my guest this week for Episode 2. Let’s dive a little deeper into some of the terms and phrases she used in the interview. You can listen to the interview here.

First things first. Krupinski is a watercolorist:

Watercolor -

Watercolor is a painting medium. It falls under the category of watermedia. Also in the watermedia family are acrylics and gouache along with a few others. Oil is not in the watermedia family. Pastel and colored pencil fall under the umbrella of dry media.

Leaving the white-

You’ll hear Krupinski mentioned that after coming from an oil background, it was hard to learn to leave the white. In oil (and other opaque media potentially acrylic depending on how you paint with acrylic) you can just paint on top of any color below. So often oil painters will paint their highlights- in this case white or very light colors- last. Because they can. But in watercolor, which is a very transparent media, you have to plan ahead and save your whites. You protect them by masking them or painting around them. In watercolor, once ou paint over a white section it’s gone. Some artists choose to come back in with opaque watercolor (called gouache) but many plan where they will keep their whites from the very beginning. 

Contour drawing-

See a Google image search here.

Contour drawing is where you put your drawing tool down on the paper and then look at your subject. For blind contour drawing you don’t look back at your paper until you are finished drawing. For semi-blind contour you may look a little at your paper. But the goal isn’t about the quality of the drawing. The goal is to teach yourself to learn to really look at what you’re drawing.

Thumbnails-

Small studies an artist does to help her plan her painting.

Soft edge vs hard edge-

You’ll hear us talk about edges a lot in our conversations. A hard edges would look like a coloring book. One color juts up against another edge side by side with no blending. One color ends. Another begins. A soft edge transitions more subtly between the two edges. Every media requires different techniques to make this blending possible. 

300 pound rough paper-

There are many different types of watercolor paper. Each paper acts a bit differently and many artists come to find they have a preference. 300 pound rough paper has a bit of a texture to it (smooth paper has less texture.)

Glaze-

There are different techniques for putting down watercolor paint onto the paper. One is the glaze. When you glaze, you paint with thin layers of paint. The goal of those thin layers is so that you can see the layers underneath. 

Design and composition elements-

Instead of trying to rehash what others have already done quite well, I’m going to send you over to artist John Lovett’s excellent explanation here.