Message: Hi, I have been taking a course on Painting portraits. It is not good at all, the instructions are not clear and not enough brushing is always the reason why I get water marks between the first layer and the top layer. This is actually a characteristic of transparent paints, they show the bottom layer through the top layer making the skin tone/shades quite uneven. Even a opaque paint like Jacquards when water is added will make a more suitable shade for skin become authomaticaly transparent. So, I have been searching high and low for an solution of water marks on my portraits and if you know anything about it or can recommend a book or a site, please let me know. By the way, my portraits are on fabric, as I am a quilter, and I have been trying them with Jacquard's textiles. Would you know if changing paints is the answer?

I think the answer is to change the kind of class you are taking. It sounds as though your painting class is teaching you how to paint with opaque paints. Is it a class in oil painting, or painting with acrylics? If you want to paint with dyes or with transparent fabric paints, you will need to use an entirely different method of applying the paint. You should be taking a class in painting portraits with watercolor paints, instead. The methods of layering colors in watercolor are very different from those used for oil paints, and are far closer to those you would use for painting portraits with dyes on fabric. 

There is an out-of-print book that you will want to look for from used book stores, Bonnie Lyn McCaffery's Portrait Quilts: Painted Faces You Can Do. It looks like exactly what you need. In addition, I have found a great many good books on painting with watercolors at the local public library, which while less specific for what you want to do, can be helpful. No book can substitute for a good class, but if you look at a book on painting pictures of people with watercolors, you will see that the techniques used are completely different. If you like watching videos, try searching YouTube for "watercolor portraits""; perhaps there's a good DVD that you could learn from. Until you are able to find a good class on how to do watercolor portraits, these will give you some ideas of the differences. 

Instead of adding water to lighten your colors, with the techniques you are currently using, it would be better to use opaque white. That will avoid the problem of increasing transparency when trying to lighten colors. Jacquard Textile Colors does include an opaque white. If your local shop does not carry it, ask them to order it for you, or mail-order it yourself.

Jacquard Textile paints are opaque only if the label for each color specifies that it is. If you want to try a more opaque fabric paint, try Neopaque fabric paint. It is made by the same manufacturer, Jacquard Products, for greater opacity, and will work better in mimicking the techniques used in painting with oil paints or artists' acrylics. For areas where opacity is not important, you can use Neopaque with Jacquard Textile Colors, according to the manufacturer.

Don't forget to heat-set carefully after using Neopaque or Jacquard Textile Colors, if you plan to ever wash your creations. You can heat-set these fabric paints by pressing with a hot iron as instructed, or in a commercial machine dryer. Don't try to use a home dryer for this step, as they usually do not get hot enough to reliably set these paints.

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