Welcome to the second week of my How to Watercolor Series! I hope you are all having fun with this so far...... I know I am!
One of the funnest parts of watercoloring is creating textures! I really really love to just play around with these. There are so many possibilities. Adding texture really adds interest and personality to a painting.
Watercolor Textures Tutorial
Materials:
Large sheet of watercolor paper
Masking Tape
Watercolor Paints
Brushes
Water
Epsom Salts- if you don't have any on hand you can even use rock salt or table salt
Plastic Wrap
Sponge
Stamp
Set-Up: Use masking tape to create 8 equal sections on a large sheet of watercolor paper. Also tape the paper down to a table or drawing board. You'll be trying out a different method for creating texture in each space- so at the end you will have tried 8 different textures.
Load up some paint on your brush and hold it close to your paper. Use a finger to quickly lift up the bristles of the brush a little at a time. This quick motion flicks the paint all over the paper and creates a spattering or spraying effect. Pretty cool!
Dripping:
For this method you'll want to load up a lot of paint and a lot of water on your brush. Then you can hold your brush directly over your paper and let the paint drip from your brush down onto the paper. You can even tilt the paper in different directions while the paint is still wet. It's fun to watch it run.
Brush on a quick and fairly wet wash of paint. Immediately sprinkle epsom, table, or rock salts on top and let it dry. Once the paint is dry you can scrape off the salt. I love the texture this creates. The salt soaks up water leaving cool little dots all over.
Brush on a wash of paint and place a piece of wrinkled plastic wrap on top. Press down with your fingers and let dry. This will create shapes wherever the plastic wrap is touching the paper.
Paint on a wash of watercolor and then with a clean brush, drip spots of water onto the wash. The water washes back into the paint creating what artists call a backwash.
Scraping:
Lay a wash of paint down on paper and scrape through it with a fork or butter knife. This will create lines in the soft paper allowing the paint to collect in the indentations.
(A word of caution on this one- Please only use an old fork or knife that will not be used for eating with later. Watercolor paints can have toxins in their pigments- so designate this utensil only for painting with, not eating, after this project.)
Dip a clean sponge in some wet paint and dab it onto the paper. You can play with layering several colors this way.
Apply wet paint to a stamp with a brush and press the stamp onto the paper. You can mix colors and layer with this method. It's really fun!
Leave the tape on the paper until the paint is dry and then gently pull it off. You are done! You can label each texture technique with a pen if desired.
Very cool post and an amazing tutorial. I'll be giving these techniques a try. I love tutorials and learning new things and you do them so very well :)
ReplyDeleteThank you.
Your blogging sister, Connie :)
I love this exercise - I will definitely do it with my four-year-old
ReplyDeleteThank you! This is very simple and easy-to-follow. Great for art journal backgrounds. :)
ReplyDeleteIt never occurred to me to use rubber stamps with watercolors. Ink, markers, even acrylics, but never watercolors. I'm looking forward to trying that one, especially!
at least wash your fork
ReplyDeleteI know my fork looks dirty in this photo and that is because it is my designated "art fork". It has dried paint on it from previous projects. I wouldn't use a normal fork that I was going to eat off of later for painting. Watercolor paints can have some toxins in the pigments, so thanks for pointing that out for me!
DeleteThank you for sharing! Been a long time since I last played with watercolours. I'll have a go using your techniques and see where my creativity takes me.
ReplyDeleteWow!!! Thank you soooo much for this great blog post.
ReplyDelete