World of Arts: Types of Watercolour

Full set of professional watercolour. Photo by: jacksonsart.com 

This time we talk about another important subject in watercolour paintings, since watercolour is one of the popular mediums compared to any other materials we used in paintings. Anyway, there are many types of watercolour, and we might want to know what are their differences and which one to use.

They are cheaper types of watercolours and there is also an artist grade that can cost more expensive. What are their differences? Watercolour is made cheaper for the student grade so it will be more affordable for students to learn. This is possible by changing its ratios of their main ingredients that consist of pigment, gum Arabic, additives and solvent. So, the student grade is totally for practicing only, when we want to be a professional painter, we need to use the artist grade watercolour for a few reasons.

Student grade allow student to practice and don't have to spend more on paints: Photo by: craftnikim.com

Lightfast test result, showing the colours faded when exposed to light. Photo by: janeblundellart.blogspot.com

Besides their qualities, artist grade watercolour not only have a brighter coloured pigments, but they also blended carefully to have a good texture. Professional artist has different preferences for the texture quality, anyway, this high grade watercolour has far better texture (evenly) than student grade watercolour. Other than easy to apply, watercolour must have the transparent quality as one of the main characters for watercolour that differentiate between watercolours than any other painting techniques.

The artist grade watercolour is more lightfast; the quality of the pigment not prone to discolour when exposed to light. This is very important to make sure the painting can be kept for a longer period of time (and increase their value). The lightfast value, usually provided by the watercolour manufacturer in their product’s specification (or you need to contact them to know about the details).

Types of watercolour

Tube watercolour maintain its colour quality. Photo by: artsupplies.co.uk 

Winsor & Newton professional set of 24, comes in pan. Photo by: cassart.co.uk 

Liquid watercolour has a vibrant colour hues. Photo by: cowlingandwilcox.com  

Then they are a few different types of watercolour (basically on their packaging). Some of them are coming in tubes while some of them come in pan. Both of them have good quality of pigments, but it’s totally depend on how you use your colours. If you don’t want your colours mixed with each other, then a tube is easier to handle. Anyway, for travelling purposes, pan is always easier.

The new types of watercolour also known as liquid watercolour is ready to use types. Mostly they have a brighter colour, but can also be diluted to produce paler hues. This watercolour is suitable for traditional brush or an airbrush technique. Usually it will be used together with traditional watercolour as a mixed media (to give contrast in the painting).

Watercolour Sets

Watercolours are sold in sets of 6 colours up to 36 colours, you might want to know which set to choose. Since colours are produced from three primary colours (Red, Yellow and Blue). You just need to make sure, you have this three main colours first. Then you also might need to have white and black because they cannot be produced by those three colours. Having a bigger set of colours will speed up your painting process, and also producing consistent quality of the colour.

It is important to know more about the materials that you use for your paintings. Especially when you think about to sell it to your customers. Good paintings should have durability for storage (this will increase their value), and might be useful as future reference. It’s Okay to have different quality of paints for practicing purposes and for the real paintings.

How to Start Bird Watching?

Bird-watching can be relaxing activity.

Bird-watching also known as birding can be wonderful activity individually, in group or as a family activity. Bird-watching usually just for recreational purposes, however birdwatchers can provide their findings to help serious organizations with valuable data before serious findings can be conducted. Nowadays more birdwatchers contribute to these purposes with the advancement of gadgets and internet technologies.

Here we want to talk about the basic tools for birdwatcher. With these basic tools we can start this new wonderful hobby to identify birds that available in our areas or maybe nearby. Even though in order to observe the birds you just can do it without any tools, but we need to learn how to collect data so the activity will be more organized.

Notebook for bird-watcher - photo from wildbirdonthefly.

Notebook - notebook is very important for this activity. Yes, you need to keep some details about your observation. Date, weather, location, bird types and location can give more information about the bird behaviour. Well, some birds are migratory and you will never see it in the same location every day. While their behaviour will help you to identify them more accurately (check the video below).

Always make sure you have some guides.

Local field guide - as a beginner always bring together some references to make sure the identification process will be much easier. So make sure you have the right reference for local areas because the birds are different according to geographical of the areas.

Digital resources make it simpler.

Digital resources - your digital equipment can be so helpful for bird-watching activities. They not only provide references, but you also can tag the location, upload the information or ask for help from other birders or get professional help for identification. You also can join larger birder groups locally or internationally.

There will be extra benefits when you do it in group.

Local group - get involve with other groups locally so you can join with their activities. Such kind of activities will make sure you gain more experiences while contribute something more valuable to the community.

Binoculars make sure you enjoy the activity without disturbing the birds.

Binoculars - always make sure you have one when doing your observation so you can enjoy more of bird-watching activity. Start with something simple (but good quality) until you find out what suitable for you bird-watching activities. Binoculars allow you to make the observation without disturbing the birds and make them fly away.

Always learn more from the experts as bird-watching can be interesting when you gain more knowledge about it. Some bird-watchers also combine their hobby with photography that will create more public awareness and add another source of income too (if you sell it). They are many possibilities when you truly enjoy what you do.

Are You Thinking About To Buy New Drone?

Drone - which one is the right one?

Drones are getting popular and will be as important as any other gadgets such as smartphones. Even though the price of drone is getting cheaper, what we need to understand about this gadget is - can they do the jobs that we are planning to do with it?

In order to answer this question we need at first to figure out few other important questions so we can make the right decision.

• What are the required tasks that we need to drone for?
• How good is the quality the drone that we need (tough, light works, all weathers) and also the pictures quality?
• The size of the drone – especially for transportation or workability.
• How much we can spend for the drone that we are going to buy?

There are many other important questions we can ask before we decide which drone is suitable, especially when you are seriously need to use the good quality drones. Buying the wrong products will cost you lots of money when you need to buy a new one. Or over spend on something that you never need also not a good decision to make.

As they are so many drones out there, all we need to know is how to read the specification correctly. Understanding the key elements that important for your requirements. Good judgements will help you to make good use of your drones at the same time values for your investment.

Here are some of good drones in different classes that you can get in the market today.

Best Overall: DJI Mavic Pro.

Runner-Up, Best Overall: Best Camera: DJI Phantom 4.

Best Budget: Syma X5SC.

Best for Beginners: Syma X5C.

Best Flight Time: Yuneec TYPHOON H RTF Drone Bundle.

Best Mini: Hubsan H107C+ HD.

Best for Intermediates: Yuneec Q500 4K Typhoon.

Best for Professionals: DJI Inspire 2.0.

Those are few examples of drones from different classes. You can find many other available drones in the market that suite your needs.

Complicated Machines With Lego

Fully functional machine - replicate the Antikythera Mechanism.

Lego already known as one of the most important toys to inspires kids to develop their creativity. By building easy structures such as home, car, building, and many other objects they will begin to develop something more complicated such as machine prototype. Perhaps Lego not only important with kids for creativity but adult too. This is true for Andrew Carol.

Andrew Carol has passion for mechanical devices and re-invented it using Lego pieces. One of the most popular machine he constructed was Antikythera Mechanism based on the real machine found by divers in 1908 off the coast of Antikythera. It took us almost 100 years to know what exactly it is, until examination using X-Rays and CAT scans revealing the internal components inside it.

The original piece of Antikythera Mechanism.

The gears on Lego version created by Andrew Carol.

Gears functions on the machines explained in the video.

Back to Andrew Carol and his Lego hobbies; he also invented few more complicated machines using Lego pieces includes the 3^rd generation of Charles Babbage Difference Engine. More of his work and hobbies can be found here on this website. From the website he also shared more details about how those machines works complete with videos.

Well it tells us that it is still not too late for everyone to play with this wonderful toy. Maybe we can come out with more brilliant ideas if we work together with the whole family.

Freshwater Aquarium Fish - Discus

Multiple colours of discus in aquarium.

Symphysodon or more popular known as discus is one of the most popular aquarium freshwater fish for since long time ago. This explained why there are so many varieties of discus in the market to make sure there always new characteristic introduce into the market every year. Discus originally native to Amazon River basin is actually part of cichlids genus. Today most of the fish breed and live in the aquarium.

Not like gourami that little tougher to water condition and diseases, discus is more sensitive and considered as ‘fragile’ fish. It’s not suitable for starting your aquarium hobby – unless you already started with few other easier to keep fishes for some period of times. Anyway for some qualities this fish has, you might want to try to keep it in your aquarium at some points.

Wide varieties of colours and patterns.

Gathering in groups.

There are three main species of discus; Symphysodon aequifasciatus (blue), Symphysodon discus (red), and Symphysodon tarzoo (green). Anyway by selective breeding, aquarist successfully produced many varieties of colours for this fish. So there are many beautiful discus fish you can keep - if you like to see all of these beautiful colourations and patterns.

As any other cichlids discus has thinner body from the top, but flatter and beautifully almost round from the side. This shapes rarely found in freshwater fish, that’s another reasons why discus become so popular. Discus also has patterns on its scales. As mentioned before, they are many new patterns produce by aquarist all over the year.

Discus behaviour itself is wonderful to watch. It’s highly social behaviour and prefer to be in groups up to dozens of individuals and only separate itself from the group during the breeding season. Discus will take care their young for the first four weeks. They also will secrete a mucus for their young to feed on. For all that reasons, discus still maintain itself as popular aquarium fish for so many years.

Let see some of the varieties of discus. More details of this fish will be included in the future articles. 

Bright colours and stunning patterns.

Beautiful stripes and spotted.

Another beautiful breed of discus.

Selective breeding make this colours possible.