 |
© 1998, 1999, WetCanvas! |
[ Home: ArtSchool Online: Watercolors: Creating and Regaining White Areas ]
Creating and Regaining White Areas
|
|
© 1998, 1999, WetCanvas! |
| In traditional watercolor painting, white is obtained from the white of the watercolor paper rather than from using a white opaque pigment. If you want to keep to the traditional way of painting in watercolor, here are three ways to get white areas in your painting. | |
 This
approach requires pre-planning...a light pencil sketch will do...so
that you know where the white areas are. Then you simply and
carefully paint around those areas, leaving the white paper showing.
If the paper is dry, you will have hard, sharply defined edges
(as shown here). If the paper is damp, the pigment will spread
more, giving you soft edges. Practice will help you anticipate
how far the paint will spread on damp paper, so that you will
still have white left even after the paint expands. |
|
 In
this technique, you use the angled end of a plastic-handled aquarelle
brush, a piece of an old plastic credit card, or even a stiff
piece of matboard to scrape your whites out of a damp passage
of paint. This approach requires perfect timing. If the paint
is too dry you will not be able to scrape back to the white paper,
and if the paint is too wet, it will run back into your scraped
areas. Practice this until you get the feel of how damp the paint
passage needs to be. |
|
 Sometimes
you just need a white (or light) area that you haven't planned
for in advance. All is not lost! Use clean water and a clean
brush to wet the pigment where you want to regain a white or
light area. Let the clean water sit on the paint for 30 seconds
or so until it can soften the paint. Then blot firmly with a
tissue or paper towel. You can repeat this procedure to further
lighten an area. If you have used a non-staining pigment, you
can usually get a near white using this method. |
|
| Finally, it is possible (on a heavy watercolor paper of 140lbs or more) to sand, erase and otherwise rough up paint areas to lighten them.You can even cut a stencil using mylar or acetate if you need to sand or erase and want a precise shape. Using an ink eraser will take off even staining pigments, but you can only do this on a good grade of watercolor paper. Otherwise you get holes! | |
| Ellen Fountain on Her Art: "I was born in Lewiston, Idaho and spent my first five years there. Our family then moved to the north fork of Moon Creek, a few miles from a small mining town (Kellogg) near Lake Coeur d'Alene. My work as a watercolor artist today has been enormously influenced by that move." | |
 Ellen
Fountain has been working primarily in watercolors since the
early 1970s. She has exhibited in over 100 invitational, solo
and juried shows, and has won over 4 dozen awards since 1982,
one third of which are national awards outside of her home state
of Arizona. She teaches workshops and classes in many locations,
and loves sharing her knowledge with others.Ellen is a contributing editor to Wetcanvas, and be reached via email at efountain@access1.net. For more information on Ellen and her wondrous watercolor works, visit her online studio at www.fountainstudio.com. |