Acrylic Watercolor Painting Read online

  Controlling Drying

  Because of the nature of his medium, the oil painter has maximum control over the drying time of his paint. He can add oils that retard drying, resins and volatile solvents that accelerate drying, and siccatives that speed up drying enormously. The painter in acrylics—particularly the acrylic watercolorist—never has this degree of control. But he does have more control than most watercolorists think.

  I’ve already mentioned that a blast of hot air from a gun-shaped hair dryer will speed the drying of a passage that you’d like to “freeze” and prevent the paint from diffusing further, as it’s apt to do on wet paper. The type of metal tea kettle with a tiny opening that emits a jet of steam will also function as a gun that shoots moisture onto a passage that needs to stay wet longer. In addition, here are a few tips about controlling drying.

  (1) It’s always tempting to extend drying time by flooding fresh water onto a wet surface. But remember that you can do this only when the surface is still shiny; when the surface shine begins to disappear, additional water may spell disaster.

  (2) A sheet of watercolor paper that’s been soaked in a tub will stay wet longer than a sheet which has been merely brushed or sponged with water. After all, the soaked sheet is wet all the way through, while the other sheet has merely been coated with water on one side. So if you want a longer drying time, soak your sheet; if you want quicker drying time, sponge or brush the sheet.

  (3) Although adding acrylic medium doesn’t retard drying time significantly, it does seem to give you more working time. That is, the paint remains brushable longer, although the drying time seems to be about the same. In reality, it’s working time, not drying time, that counts.

  (4) The nature of the painting surface will also have a strong effect upon drying time. Highly absorbent papers tend to hold the water longer and generally mean a longer drying time. Less absorbent, hard surfaced papers often have a shorter drying time because the moisture stays on the surface and evaporates more quickly. On the other hand, the paradox seems to be that an absorbent paper can have less working time, while the less absorbent paper can give you more working time; because the paint rests on the nonabsorbent surface, you have a bit more freedom to push it around before it dries. If you’ve tried Japanese paper as I suggested in Chapter 3, you’ve discovered that this highly absorbent paper gives you no working time; once the paint hits the paper, the stroke is there to stay and there’s no leeway to make a change.

  (5) When you paint on a sheet that’s been soaked in the tub, the surface of your drawing board will also influence drying time. An absorbent surface like wood or fiberboard will soak up some of the moisture and accelerate drying time. A plastic surface or a sheet of glass—which many watercolorists use for the wet paper method—obviously won’t absorb moisture and this gives you a longer drying time.

  (6) Some painters slow down drying time by placing a wet blotter or a thick wet cloth beneath their sheet of wet paper. This seems to have the effect of pumping in additional moisture from the back of the sheet.

  Winter Snow by Arthur J. Barbour, A.W.S., acrylic on watercolor board. The artist says: “First I pencil-sketched the scene from my car window. Large areas of the design were drawn in and mental notes were made on the spot. With the subject fresh in mind, I went to the studio and proceeded to paint. I wet the board with clean water and sponge. The main theme ... the rocks and snow . . . was painted in first ... in a transparent manner. Several of the trees were introduced on top of the composition. After the board was dry, I rewet areas and painted in the foreground and sky. ” It’s worthwhile to study the amount of detail suggested within the wet-in-wet sky, the trees, and the growth in the foreground. If the paint is just thick enough and the surface is in the right state of semi-dryness, a stroke will retain its character and spread only slightly. Because acrylic dries waterproof, the surface can be wetted repeatedly and additional color areas painted in or reinforced. (Photo, M. Grumbacher, Inc.)

  Cityscape with Sun by Richard Yip, acrylic on watercolor paper, 15 “x22½”. Because the brushing consistency of acrylic color can be so carefully controlled-with or without the aid of matt or gloss medium–a wet-in-wet painting can hold a surprising amount of detail. What’s most interesting here is the way the darks hold their places rather than disappear into a sea of liquid color. Applied thickly enough, acrylic will spread only slightly, and remain solid and distinct, while giving the soft edged look that wet-in-wet painters want. If the surface has just the right degree of wetness and the consistency of the paint is just thick enough, even very delicate strokes will stay put — like the flat, circular strokes surrounding the sun. It’s also easy to scrape away wet-in-wet acrylic with a not-too-sharp pointed instrument, as Yip has done to suggest calligraphic accents.

  This mottled, graded wash, so different from the smoothly graded wash done with a brush, actually began as a solid wash of color. A damp paper towel—you can also use a sponge—was gently dabbed into the wet surface to lift the color gradually and produce this vibrant, atmospheric gradation.

  This graded wash began as a scrap of sopping wet paper. A man-made rectangular sponge was dampened and folded into a rounded shape, something like a natural sponge. This unorthodox painting instrument was then dipped into a gummy mixture of tube color and lots of acrylic medium. The thick color was carefully dabbed into the wet surface with more color applied at the top than at the bottom. The color tended to spread slightly, but the texture of the sponge is still evident.

  If you’re going to do a lot of wet-in-wet painting, it’s worth the effort to devote some time to trying out these various ways of speeding up or slowing down your drying time—which really means your working time.

  Wiping, Lifting, and Scraping

  Because the effects of wet-in-wet painting are always so unpredictable, it’s not only important to learn how to apply paint, but also how to remove it. I’ve already pointed out that you can lift wet paint with a damp brush, if you’re careful to flick out the excess water and then squeeze out a bit more with your fingers so that the brush acts like a pointed sponge. In Chapter 2, I also mentioned that you can lift and blot out color with paper towels and cleansing tissues. But perhaps the most useful tool for this purpose is the sponge ...

  Before you begin to work, be sure to soak the sponge so that it’s absolutely soft and flexible. A sponge which is only partially wet feels stiff and is inclined to scrape the paper, leaving a scratchy trail, rather than wiping out the color. After the sponge is thoroughly soaked, you can squeeze out nearly all the water, leaving the sponge just faintly damp. A soft, damp sponge will wipe the paper amazingly clean, provided that the paper you choose has a fairly hard, nonabsorbent surface. Sponges don’t work so well on soft, absorbent papers, which may be roughened and irreparably damaged by any kind of rubbing.

  Put down a wash of color and then try different kinds of sponge strokes on the wet color. Try pressing the sponge down and then lifting it up, without moving it across the paper or rubbing. This will leave a mottled, irregular mark; if you press lightly, only a little color will be lifted, while if you press heavily, much more color will be lifted away. Now try a long, slow, wiping motion and see how much color you remove when you press lightly and press heavily.

  If you buy a flat, rectangular sponge—the synthetic, not the natural kind—you can cut this into a number of shapes for different painting purposes. You can cut it into long, skinny rectangles for cleaning away strips of color. You can cut it into circular shapes for dabbing and for lifting round areas of color. You can even cut wedge shapes which will give you surprising precision when you want to lift a small area of wet color.

  This irregularly graded wash—which really consists of individual blurs of color roughly placed next to one another—was produced by a sponge on dry paper. The sponge was dampened, wadded into a round shape, dipped into liquid color, and then pressed against the paper in a series of quick up-and-down movements. Each blur of color is an in
dividual sponge mark.

  This stipple effect was produced with the irregular tip of a sponge on wet paper. The paper was first covered with a light wash. A rectangular man-made sponge was dampened and the corner of the sponge was dipped into liquid color slightly thickened with acrylic medium. The tiny flecks and blurs of color are quick touches of the corner of the paint-coated sponge. The touches spread softly into the wet surface.

  This unusual texture was produced by a combination of gel medium and a man-made sponge. A scrap of watercolor paper was thickly coated with a gummy mixture of tube color and gel. While the paint was still wet, a damp sponge was pressed into the surface. When the sponge was lifted away, the mottled texture of the sponge was imprinted on the paint.

  Washes of color diluted with acrylic medium lend themselves to scraping with various blunt tools, provided that the color is still wet. The thin line to the extreme left was made with the blunted point of a metal paring knife. The slightly thicker line was scraped away with a wooden ice cream stick. The still thicker line, second from right, was produced with the side of a butter knife; note the interesting pileup of paint along the edges. The very wide, rough area of light at the extreme right was scraped away with an old, blunt carving knife.

  Kingston Harbor by Jay O’Meilia, A.W.S., acrylic on 300 lb. Arches paper, 21 “x29 ”. The scintillating whites of the boats and their masts are dramatized by the big wet-in-wet forms of the mountains beyond, which blend softly into the sky above. The whites were apparently painted over the darker shapes of the mountains and many of the strokes are irregular drybrush, allowing the background darks to come through. The biggest, roughest drybrush strokes are in the immediate foreground. This “rule of thumb” is popular among professional watercolorists: big, rough strokes in the immediate foreground; smoother, more precise brushwork in the middle ground; soft edged passages, minimizing detail, in the distance.

  Nor should you forget the sponge brushes which I described in Chapter 2. The large ones will clear away a big, wide strip of color with one firm stroke. The smaller ones can be handled like brushes, taking away color instead of applying it.

  Of course, the sponge isn’t only a lifting and wiping tool. It can also be a very effective painting tool. You can use a sponge to dab color straight into a wet wash to introduce a blur of tone, which will quickly melt into the surrounding wetness. A series of dabs, covering an entire area, can produce a lively, irregular, granular tone, which has a texture you can’t get any other way. A sponge will carry thick, gummy color that may be too stiff for your brush to carry; on the other hand, you can also soak up a spongeful of very liquid color and literally squeeze this out over the paper, thus introducing fresh color and interesting accidental effects into a wet wash.

  When you paint with a sponge, particularly when you’re adding color to a wet wash, don’t press too hard against the paper, or the sponge will soak up color instead of depositing fresh paint. Pressure is for lifting color; handle the sponge lightly when you paint with it.

  The wet paper technique also lends itself particularly well to scratching and scraping. In Chapter 2, I mentioned that it’s wise to have a sharp knife handy for scratching dark lines into the wet paint. If the point of the knife digs into the surface of the wet paper, the liquid color will fill the scratch and this will become a dark line. This is an excellent trick for indicating twigs, dark weeds and grass, masts and rigging on ships.

  You can also introduce a note of white into a soaking wet wash with a blunt instrument like a butter knife or an ice cream stick. The idea is to draw the tool across the paper in such a way that the paint is squeezed out or pushed aside. You don’t dig into the paper, which would produce a dark line, but actually press the color out.

  The acrylic mediums make all these tricks easier. Dabbing and pressing paint into a wet surface with a sponge is much more effective if the color is thick and gummy, which simply means adding acrylic medium or gel to the tube color. In the same way, it’s much easier to scrape away a wash of wet color that contains acrylic medium, which is thicker and more scrapeable than a wash which contains only water. Try it both ways and you’ll see. I should point out that all the tricks I’ve described in this section are equally suitable for any kind of wash. You can also go back into a flat or graded wash with a sponge, a knife, or a blunt instrument for scraping paint. But these techniques are particularly useful in wet-in-wet painting, which tends toward an overall blurriness and often needs a change of texture, or a crisp note of dark or light.

  Correcting Wet-in-Wet Effects

  Once it’s dry, correcting a wet paper effect is even harder than correcting a flat or graded wash. Because a wet-in-wet effect is all soft edges and blurry transitions, rather than sharply defined shapes, it may be difficult to paint out an unsuccessful area with opaque white and start over again. If the wet paper effect is confined to an area like the sky, with clearly defined shapes of buildings or mountains at the horizon, you can paint out the entire sky right down to the horizon line, let the white paint dry, and then try a new wet-in-wet attack. But if the entire picture is painted wet-in-wet, with no crisp edges where one color area ends and another begins, then painting out probably won’t work. However, there are some last ditch measures which are worth trying if the painting is really a hopeless mess and you have nothing to lose.

  (1) Using the flat wash technique described in Chapter 5, try covering the unsuccessful painting with a semi-transparent wash of white or some other color. This will put a white or colored haze over the entire picture, turning all the colors pale, but leaving some hint of the original design. When the semi-transparent corrective wash is dry, you can flood the paper with clear water once again, and try for some fresh wet-in-wet effects that will come closer to your original intention. Try to strengthen the areas that need more punch, but let the weaker areas remain half hidden in the haze.

  (2) Again going back to the technique described in Chapter 5, try a graded wash in semi-transparent color, either white or some other light hue. This might be a good solution if your wet-in-wet picture is worse at one end than another. You can even lay a diagonal graded wash, which starts out pale in one corner and gets more and more opaque at the corner diagonally opposite. This is useful if the unsuccessful part of the picture occupies a corner.

  (3) A third possibility, certainly the most difficult and hazardous, is to flood the entire picture with lots of clear water, or soak the sheet in the tub once again, and drop soft blurs of semi-transparent white or some other light color onto the bad spots of the composition, letting these blurs spread and intermingle in their own accidental, unpredictable way. In this way, the semi-transparent haze will cover some parts of the picture more heavily than others. If the haze thickens and thins out in the right places, you have a decent chance to try once again when the haze dries and you start a new wet-in-wet attack.

  The Open Door by Henry Gasser, N.A., A.W.S., acrylic on mounted cold pressed watercolor paper, 30”x22”. The beautiful precision of the design can tempt you to overlook the intriguing array of controlled accidents and very free painting in this elegant study of a glass doorway. Within the crisp tracery of the ironwork, the panes of glass are painted in an unobtrusive wet-in-wet technique. The curved panes at the top of the doorway appear to be stippled, while the wall surrounding the doorway combines wet-in-wet blurs and dabs with a highly controlled use of spatter and stipple.

  (4) The solutions I’ve just suggested–semi-transparent washes that are allowed to dry before you start to paint again—can also be used in a different way. You can flood the unsuccessful painting with one of the half-concealing washes and try a new wet-in-wet attack while the corrective wash is still wet. What you’ll get, of course, is a semi-transparent painting, not the traditional transparent one. You might get something that works–and it’s your last chance anyhow.

  (5) Of course, such radical corrections may not be needed. You may just wish that the colors were a bit different, that you’d put in a
blur of foliage here or perhaps a dark cloud where you now have a white one. The solution to these problems is a lot easier. Simply wet the paper once again, and superimpose the new color, the new shape, or the new texture, putting it where you want it and letting it blend into the wetness. When the new wet-in-wet passage has dried, it should merge with the old one. Normally, this corrective method is taboo when you work with traditional watercolor. The second wet-in-wet attack is likely to wreck the underlying color. But remember that acrylic dries waterproof, so that you can pile one wet-in-wet passage over another, building increasing subtlety and richness without any danger that the overwash will dissolve the underwash.

  The most serious objection to all these corrective measures—except for the last one—is that they introduce a semi-transparent layer of white or some other opaque color. The purist who believes that only transparent watercolor is the real thing will prefer to chuck the painting and start over again on the other side of the sheet. I won’t argue with him. But if that semi-transparent veil of color is applied delicately enough, allowed to dry, and then covered with transparent color, the effect can be close to a pure, transparent watercolor. You may even find that alternate washes of semi-transparent and transparent color produce a depth and luminosity that surpass a picture painted entirely in transparent color.