Watercolor Painting for Dummies (18 page)
Read Watercolor Painting for Dummies Online
Authors: Colette Pitcher
Tags: #Art, #Techniques, #Watercolor Painting, #General
In This Chapter
Sparkling whites and how to achieve them
Exploring magical textures
Trying out terrific techniques
O
ne of the best attributes of watercolor is the vast number of techniques available. Watercolor moves and reacts to your command. That may sound a little scary, but actually it’s the best quality of the paint. In this chapter, I want you to forget about making anything that looks like something. The pressure to make perfect drawings or identifiable objects is off. In experimental, nonrepresentational work you simply enjoy the colors, textures, and surprises that result when playing with the medium.
Play
is a good word. It sets the mood for how you explore these techniques.
In order to play, set up your palette and paint area as noted in Chapter 2. Get some watercolor paper ready to play upon. You can tear up small pieces about 5 inches by 7 inches and use one for each technique experiment, or you can just use little areas on any scraps available.
Sometimes these experimental techniques just don’t work. Sometimes they work better than you planned. That’s why they’re called experimental. Not every work of art works. There’s a reason some pieces win prizes — the artist got lucky that day.
Typically, you paint on white watercolor paper. And ideally you save the white of the paper as the white in the painting, painting around the white areas to leave the paper showing. Although you can buy white watercolor paint, it looks a little chalky, and unless you’re going for the unnatural look, my advice is to avoid using it. Watercolor is very different from oil or acrylic painting where paint is applied for white areas.
It’s a good plan to paint light areas first and continue with successively darker colors. Work light to dark.
This section covers the tricks available to keep white in your painting.
Wax resists watercolor, so using a white crayon or a candle is a quick and easy way to save a bit of white when painting. Say you don’t want to go to the effort of painting around an area for a tiny highlight in a flower. Just a touch of a crayon saves the dot, stays invisible, and keeps you from needing a steady hand to paint around that highlight.
Any substance that prevents or resists paint is known as a
resist,
and wax is one type of resist
.
(Colored wax acts a resist as well, but it obviously leaves a colored area on the paper, so unless that’s the effect you’re going for, be sure to use white wax.) Figure 4-1 shows a wax resist.
Figure 4-1:
Squiggled white wax lines under a watercolor wash.
To save white in a painting with a wax resist, follow these steps:
1.
Find a white crayon or a white candle.
2.
Draw on the watercolor paper using your crayon or candle.
Your design is hard to see — invisible in fact. If you tip the paper, you can see by the matte finish where you applied the wax.
In an actual painting, you’d put the wax anywhere you want to save a highlight, perhaps for a glint in an eye or a sunspot on a leaf. Just cover where you want white, but remember the wax stays on the paper. If you want the paper clean later, use a masking fluid (described later in this chapter) because it peels off after you’ve saved the white area.
3.
Using a brush of your choice, paint over the top with a diluted paint of any color.
Voilà! Your secret design is revealed.
Keep these points in mind when you use wax to preserve white in your watercolors:
The darker the paint you use over the wax, the more vivid your design will be.
Smooth paper holds a better wax line. If your paper is really textured, the wax may not coat the paper entirely. If only the top surface of textured paper gets wax, the result is another spotty texture, which may be just the effect you’re looking for.
The wax stays on the paper because it’s not removable. It’s essentially invisible except for the waxy buildup. If used in small amounts, it may not be visible at all.
Creating wax resists can serve more than your artistic side. Kids will love this technique to send a secret message:
1. Write a message on white paper using a white crayon. The white is invisible on white paper.
2. Give the paper to your friend.
3. Tell your friend to apply paint on the paper to reveal the secret message.
