Watercolor Painting for Dummies (23 page)
Read Watercolor Painting for Dummies Online
Authors: Colette Pitcher
Tags: #Art, #Techniques, #Watercolor Painting, #General
A
stencil
protects what is underneath from paint or provides an area to paint while protecting the surrounding paper. Stencils provide a quick way to achieve a look. And who couldn’t use some extra time today?
Anything can function as a stencil: hardware, coins, paper cut or torn into shapes, mesh, doilies. Figure 4-7 in the earlier “Spraying your art out” section was painted by resting lace on the paper and spraying paint over it. The lace served as a stencil. You can make your own stencils out of paper or anything else you have on hand.
Stenciling is fairly straightforward:
1.
Position your stencil(s) on the paper.
You may be laying raggedly torn strips of paper to outline tree shapes or putting a penny where you want a circle to appear.
2.
Mix up paint and water in your spray bottles.
The earlier “Spraying your art out” section gives mixing tips.
3.
Paint.
Often spraying is the preferred method with stenciling, but you can use a brush or a sponge as well.
4.
Let the paint dry before removing the stencil.
Stamping
is a method of creating or finding an item that becomes a paint carrier that can re-create an image multiple times. You know what a rubber stamp is. Same idea. However, rubber stamps are designed and copyrighted by some- one else, and you’re interested in creating original fine art. Stamping is a time-saving device that can produce a random, loose look.
Follow these steps for
a cheap, easy way to make your own stamp:
1.
Get a piece of mat board or illustration board about 2 inches square.
Your neighborhood frame shop can give you a handful of scraps of mat board for free. Quarter-inch thick foam core board or illustration board also works.
The board needs to have a smooth surface, so corrugated cardboard isn’t good, and it’s also highly acidic.
2.
Use a cutting tool like a razor blade or utility knife to cut in your design.
You can create a stamp to produce realistic grass in a matter of seconds. The line you cut is the line that stamps, but it will be backwards. So if you cut a line that curves right on the stamp, it will curve left on your paper.
3.
Attach a tape handle to the back of the board.
To create the handle, fold a piece of tape in half short-wise and sticky sides together, leaving both ends free to attach to the back of your board.
4.
Mix some puddles of paint in your palette.
5.
Dip your stamp in the paint and press it on your paper.
You can stamp numerous times to repeat a pattern if that’s what you’re aiming for.
If the edge of the square stamps into the paper, try bending the corners upward to prevent them from touching the paper.
Figure 4-12 shows some grass and the stamp I used to make it. You can do the same by scribing a few lines in a stamp to represent grass and repeating the pattern. To add some fence posts in the grass, use the edge of a piece of foam core to apply paint; for wider posts, drag the paint to the desired width.
Figure 4-12:
Stamped grass texture and the mat board stamp that created it.
Painting on crinkled rice paper helps you produce watercolors with an artsy look and sometimes an Asian feel.
Rice paper
is a thin, absorbent, see-through paper usually made in Japan. Some papers have designs embossed or imbedded in them. There are many beautiful types available at most art supply stores, and you can use other types of thin paper as well.
Applying paint to rice paper forces the artist to let go of rigid edges and allow a little randomness to take over. Nature scenes work nicely on this type of paper.
To prepare a painting surface for a project using rice paper, follow these steps:
1.
Choose pieces of mat board and rice paper the same size.
Mat board
is
a 4-ply board used to mat artwork when framing. The mat board can be any color, but it will show through the rice paper, influencing the color — which can be part of the fun.
2.
Paint the mat board with diluted white glue.
Dilute the glue with enough water to make it the consistency of whole milk.
3.
Wad up the rice paper into a ball and then smooth it back out and place it on the gluey mat board so that it adheres to the mat board.
Wrinkles are okay; they add character.
4.
Let the glue dry overnight.
5.
Start painting.
Your paint reacts very differently on this surface. It’s looser and may have a mind of its own. Paint shows up darker in the cracks of the wrinkles, giving the image a unique appearance. It’s difficult to get a hard edge, but the wrinkles are an interesting design element. Figure 4-13 shows an iris painting using this technique.
Figure 4-13:
Wrinkled rice paper glued to a mat board for a surface-influenced design.
When you use another art medium with your watercolor you automatically have mixed media. (Yes, it’s true: I’m good at both art and grammar.
Medium
is singular, and
media
is plural.) Because watercolor is so versatile, it’s a natural to mix with many other media.
Watercolor is used on paper, so I don’t recommend mixing watercolor with oil paint, which is used on canvas. Remember the old truism: Oil and water don’t mix. Oil can also discolor and leach into paper, disintegrating it over a long period of time. Not good.
Using an ink pen in your watercolor painting adds a dimension of hard, precise lines that you just can’t replicate with watercolor paint and a brush. Think of it as making your own coloring book pages and then adding the watercolor. You can do it the other way around too. Paint with watercolor first and then emphasize shapes with lines using a pen.
You can use any pen that you like. It can be a dipped calligraphy pen or a disposable felt-tip. You can go with waterproof ink or not. Your local art supply store offers a vast variety of choices and colors.
If you want your lines crisp, use a waterproof pen. But don’t count out the pen that blurs, because it produces a different look that can be very pleasing. You also see pens described as
permanent,
which means that the ink won’t fade over time or in sunlight.
The cityscape in Figure 4-14a was drawn with a waterproof pen and then watercolor was added on top. The boat in Figure 4-14b was drawn with a non-waterproof pen, and the lines blurred when watercolor was added.
Figure 4-14:
You can use a pen to get either hard or blurred lines into your painting, depending on what look you’re going for.
To test pens, take a piece of watercolor paper, write the brand of each type of pen on the paper, then take a damp brush and paint a line of water over the writing. You can tell quickly which ones are waterproof. Waterproof pens should also be labeled as such.
