Watercolor

Watercolor 102 - Tips and Techniques

After an artist begins to work in watercolor and feels confident about how the materials will react in different applications, it is time to delve deeper into the medium.  Several techniques, on a higher skill level than what is considered basic, make the experience of creating original watercolor paintings more enjoyable and more challenging.

Among the skills an intermediate watercolor artist might consider are the use of resist materials and masks; particular methods for different atmospheric conditions such as fog, mist and snow; spritzing and spattering for special effects; sharp-edged implements for incising, scratching and gouging; and employing negative space as part of a strong or unusual design.

One skill that might elude the beginner watercolorist is perfecting a method of keeping whites within a painting.  Without very precise planning and careful study, the whites disappear into washes and overlays of color.  There are a few ways to keep and hold pristine paper white areas without surface damage and with very precise control.  And there are more “barbaric” ways to retrieve whites that might give you an entirely new style.

Holding and keeping white paper for the brightest highlights in your work can be done with the use of very precise drawing and with extreme care.  Or you can use one of two different methods to totally protect the white of the paper.  First, you can use liquid frisket, which is a rubber-like fluid that can be brushed onto the paper.  Once dry, the “rubber” resists the pigment, thereby holding the white paper beneath any painting done over it.  When the painting is completely dry, you carefully rub off the flexible coating to expose sharp whites.

Secondly, you can use frisket masking material.  If, for instance, you want to protect the entire lower section of your painting while you work to create a dramatic sky, use self-adhesive frisket film (Artool) to cover the sections you want kept clean.  Once a section is dry, remove the frisket and paint another area.  This material is especially helpful when you are creating more abstract images and want to overlay sharp, edgy items on a completed background or when you have large areas of detail work that you want to be able to create after the preliminary work is done and precise.

For splattering and spritzing you can use a spray bottle, but not just any spray bottle.  Each type of delivery system of the spray mechanism yields a different spray pattern.  Old window cleaner bottles, for instance, give large droplet, random spatters.  Pump sprayers like those used in beauty salons can give a finer mist, but will have larger drops mixed in with smaller droplets.  Art supply pump bottles give pretty even droplets in fairly controlled areas of distribution.  Experiment with all the spray bottles you can find and you will discover an entire treasure trove of effects.  Remember that the airbrush will give the softest spray of all.  You will discover that one of these will be just right for foreground embellishment or whatever else you are trying to achieve.

Sharp-edged tools can be great for “reclaiming” texture, bright lines and sparkling whites in very precise locations.  A blade with a handle such as an X-Acto knife is very easy to use.  The most frequent way this tool is used is in a scraping motion, dragging the blade over the surface of a completely dry watercolor painting.  This can yield an irregular, clear white scratchy line that is great for indicating sharp light on the edges of subjects.  Needle tools can also be used to drag through dark areas for scratchy, irregular lines that can indicate grasses, woven fabric, tiny water droplets and the like.  The tip of the needle tends to catch different fibers in ways to pluck them open and expose varying amounts of the white paper under the painted surface.

Precise use of negative space—the area around the central subject that is not filled with detail—is difficult.  This could be the area around a single rose blossom or the vignette space around a central subject.  It is hard to use this space as a direct part of your design and presentation but it is, however, possible to do so.  By drawing and redrawing your subject, the space around that subject takes on its own importance.  And, with practice, you can use these shapes as design elements for your work.

While many would describe intermediate watercolor in other ways, the methods and techniques described above, once mastered, will enable you to create a wider range of artworks.  Give any of these a try and see how they make your experience in watercolor more rewarding and worthwhile, as well as more challenging.

Copyright ARTtalk Vol. 19 No. 2 — December 2008