Wout de Zeeuw Watercolors

I’ve been doing a few dog portraits for fun (I like to paint animals) in the second half of 2017 and posted them on reddit. They received some nice responses and a few people have asked if I did commissions. So in this post I’m putting together some information!

First of all: at the moment I can do a dog portrait for €125, the size being 7×10″ watercolor paper. Right now I can’t do other sizes, because mailing becomes a lot more cumbersome for larger sizes (which I could do, but the price would get higher). The price includes postage. I have time for about 1-2 paintings per week in my spare time. Mail from the Netherlands to the US takes roughly 2 weeks (track and trace is provided).

About the photo reference: the most important thing is good lighting, and second most important thing is composition. Good lighting is cross lighting (no frontal flash!), and preferably the light will highlight the dogs eyes/face. See this excellent reference photo of Ralph the beagle:

Also this photo illustrates good composition, the photographer is at about the dog’s eye level. Often dogs are photographed from above, and this makes for a poor composition.

Send me an e-mail at wout@woutdezeeuw.com for working out the details. Messages on reddit are difficult to track down.

Here are some dog portraits I’ve been doing in the last few months, hope you enjoy them!

Here’s a watercolor travel kit I took with me today. Palette (Rembrandt), refillable pencil, travel brush (Escoda), and a piece of cloth in a large plastic cup.

Here’s a list of materials used for my first watercolor class. All of the materials were ordered at www.gerstaecker.nl, unless mentioned otherwise. This is cheaper if you order enough so you don’t pay for shipping (above €99). Locally in Eindhoven, van Beek is a nice shop (vanbeekart.nl). I will show a few watercolors in van Beek on the first floor on Oct 1 and Oct 8, from 11:00 until 16:00, you are welcome to visit me!

Paints: Vincent van Gogh, 10 ml tubes. This is the student quality line, which is more affordable than the artist quality line (Rembrandt). The quality is very good though (I read the pigments are the same in both lines). Colors used:

• Azo yellow light (268)
• Permanent red light (370)
• Quinacridone rose (366), this is a very nice bright pink, very versatile, can be used for flowers, mixes nice skin colors, and with yellow it mixes a nice kind of ochre.
• Burnt umber (409), a warm brown.
• Sepia (416), a dark, cool brown. Mix with Indigo for greys and black.
• Phtalo blue (570), fairly bright blue
• Indigo (533), a very dark greyish blue
• Hooker green light (644)

Brush: this was the most expensive item (together with the plastic boards), about €15: da Vinci, series 36 (Kolinsky-Rotmarter), size 8. This is a nice natural hair brush (natural hair is softer than synthetic). The size is suitable for smaller size paintings. For bigger paintings you need bigger (mop) brushes, but they quickly get a lot more expensive. This is a nice size to start playing around with.

Paper: Arches, 185g, rough. This is an artist grade type paper, 100% cotton. For smaller sizes 185g is ok, for larger sizes you might want to get the thicker 300g, but also more expensive ofcourse. The rough texture allows you to add texture to your paint strokes if you quickly skip over the paper with your brush. I bought a 10-pack of full sheets, and then cut them into 16 smaller ones. I would definitely not recommend skimping on the paper quality, the cheaper cellulose papers are very hard to work with and don’t give as good results.

Pencil: I like to use 2B pencils. Harder pencils are not dark enough sometimes, and can damage the paper. Kneaded erasers are nice for erasing on watercolor paper. Refillable pencils are convenient (e.g. 0.5mm or 0.7mm), because you never have to sharpen them, and you get thin lines. I just replace the standard fillings with 2B fillings.

Palette: cheapest I could find, about €4.46: Lei Niao, Thunderburd, 24 colours. Made in Taiwan. It’s not super robust, but it works, and the thing that’s important, the watercolor sticks flat to the plastic, so you can see the colors properly. Often the plastic is a bit “oily”, and the water beads, instead of staying flat, and it’s difficult to see the color. It takes time for these type of plastic palettes to break in. Bought here: http://www.schleiper.com/onlinecatalogue/articles/TEM275–peacock-plastieken-palet-met-deksel-rechthoekig-10x23cm?lang=nl. Found even cheaper (€3.15) here: http://www.kunstmateriaal.be/product_info.php?cPath=32_36_54&products_id=2344. If you wanna get all from the same shop to save on shipping, you could try this one: http://www.gerstaecker.nl/Verf-Mediums/Toebehoren-schilderen/Paletten/Kunststof-palet.html. It’s €7.82, I haven’t tried this palette.

Tape: just some acid free paper tape, bought in the physical van Beek store (http://vanbeekart.nl/).

All these web shops charge a fee of about €7 perhaps for shipping, unless you order above some amount.