Acrylic Watercolor Painting

by Wendon Blake

  (3) Now, if you really have patience, you can repeat the wet mixing process with three colors. This time, you’ll be painting three bars that make a Y instead of a V. You’ll need lots more paper.

  Once again, observe which colors have the greatest tinting strength, and which tend to dominate the mixtures. You’ll also observe some really startling blends, which you might never expect when you mixed just two colors.

  Now spread out these three batches of tests and look at them again. First compare the two kinds of mixtures: the optical mixtures in which you laid one strip of color over another, and the physical mixtures in which you blended two or three colors. It should be obvious that optical and physical mixtures produce quite different effects. Remember these differences when you start to paint, and decide in advance which type of mixture is right for each passage in the painting.

  You should also compare the nature of the two color mixtures and the three color mixtures. One tremendously important lesson is that the more colors you mix, the less brilliant the blend becomes. Unless you have a terribly good reason—let’s say you’re shooting for a color you can’t get any other way—avoid mixing more than two or three colors at a time. It’s very rare that you need more than three colors in a single mixture. Four colors are likely to mean mud. Three colors are often unnecessary and even downright dangerous. If you must resort to three colors, let two of them dominate and just add a touch of the third to modify the mixture ever so slightly.

  5.

  Wash Techniques

  Despite its apparent simplicity, every professional painter knows that watercolor (which includes acrylic watercolor) is the most difficult of all painting media. What makes watercolor so demanding is just this: it takes a great deal of skill and practice merely to put color on the painting surface. The beginning watercolorist is constantly amazed—and often discouraged—to discover how hard it is to cover a piece of paper with a flat tone without streaks, blotches, and other unpleasant surprises. To produce a graded color area—one that moves from light to dark or from dark to light—is even harder. And the task of producing a solid area of really dark color is enough to make many beginners give up watercolor altogether.

  In watercolor painting a flat or graded area of color is called a wash. Learning to lay a wash is basic training for the watercolorist. One of the great arguments in favor of acrylic as a watercolor medium is the fact that acrylic emulsion can make washes a lot easier. I’ll explain why in this chapter, which reviews the basic wash techniques and shows how these techniques are simplified and enriched when you paint watercolors in acrylic.

  Washes with Acrylic Mediums

  For the wash exercises in this chapter you’ll need some pieces of paper about the size of the page you’re now reading. Although I don’t advocate using cheap paper for painting, I suppose you can use some cheap, student grade watercolor paper for these preliminary tryouts, or you can use the backs of some spoiled paintings. You’ll also need your largest round or flat watercolor brush. Fill a big jar or bowl with clear water for diluting your tube color. And pour about an inch of matt or gloss medium into a paper cup. Pull out an inexpensive tube of earth color—like burnt umber—and squeeze a dab onto your palette. Finally, keep a saucer handy for mixing batches of liquid color.

  In the exercises that follow, you’re going to try laying washes with and without acrylic medium. In the previous chapter, you’ve already had some experience with the ways in which color behaves when you add plain water and when you add various acrylic mediums. But you haven’t actually covered a large area with liquid color. That’s what you’re going to do now. You’re going to see how a slight addition of acrylic medium alters the behavior of a wet wash, and equally important, alters the character of the wash when it dries. This subtle change in the character of the dry wash is particularly important when you plan to put one wash over another. And the unique quality of a dry wash of acrylic watercolor will turn that old bogey—the very dark wash—into a much less scary process.

  Before you begin, I should repeat one piece of advice. A saucerful of acrylic watercolor takes more stirring—and more repeated stirring—than traditional watercolor. Remember that you’re compounding three ingredients: color, acrylic medium, and water. To make sure that they’re properly blended, stir them thoroughly when you first mix up your batch of color. Stir them again each time you dip your brush into the saucer to pick up more color. You’ll soon learn to work quickly, dipping and stirring at the same time, so that there’s no delay in the painting process. A wash must be laid quickly, and you mustn’t pause between strokes.

  Flat Washes

  As I’m sure you know already, a flat wash is an even area of color, the same density from top to bottom, without any lighter or darker patches. Here’s the usual way of laying a flat wash in traditional watercolor.

  (1) Tape or tack your sheet of paper to your drawing board and tilt the board up at the back—so that the back end is 4” or 5” higher than the front end. This will give you a tilt of about 20° or 30°; the exact tilt is a matter of taste and experience. Some watercolorists like a steeper tilt than others; remember that the steeper the tilt, the faster the color will roll down the paper toward you.

  (2) Mix up a fairly light wash of color in the saucer, just a bit more than you think you’ll need to cover the paper. This first time, just use tube color and water, no acrylic medium. Stir the mixture thoroughly.

  (3) Dip your brush into the liquid color and make sure that the brush is fully loaded. Paint a strip of liquid color across the top of the sheet, working with a slow, steady, firm stroke. Don’t be impatient; don’t move your brush too quickly, or you’ll leave behind little bubbles of white paper.

  (4) Because your drawing board is tilted, you’ll notice that the liquid color tends to move downward toward you, forming a long, narrow pool along the bottom edge of the stroke. Now dip your brush back into the saucer, stir quickly, and paint a second strip of color just beneath the first. Actually, the second strip should just overlap the bottom edge of the first, so that the pool of color rolls down across the second strip and forms a new pool along the bottom edge of your second stroke.

  The basic watercolor technique, which you must master before going any further, is the flat wash. Notice the slightly granular quality where the color settles into the texture of the paper.

  This strange and fascinating wash was laid on cold pressed watercolor paper, which was previously coated with a thin layer of acrylic gesso. The gesso reduces the absorbency of the paper, retaining the streaky texture of the brush used to apply the gesso. The liquid color rides on the surface and retains the unique character of this ground.

  (5) Repeat this process of dipping, stirring, and charging your brush, then painting fresh strips of color until you get to the bottom of the sheet. Each new strip of color should slightly overlap the preceding strip of color so that the “bead” keeps moving down across the paper and reforming at the bottom of the stroke. What you’re really doing, in a sense, is methodically advancing a pool of liquid color across the surface of the paper.

  (6) You’ve now covered the paper with color, but there’s a pool of color at the very bottom of the sheet. If you leave the pool there and let it dry, your wash will become suddenly darker at the bottom. There may be some times when you’re going to want this effect, but this is an exercise in flat wash technique, so let’s eliminate that pool. Wash out your brush in clear water; give the brush a quick shake or snap with your wrist as you do when you’re shaking down the mercury in a fever thermometer. This will get rid of most of the water in the brush, but the hairs will still be wet. Draw the tip of the moist brush along the bottom edge of the paper and you’ll see that the brush acts like a blotter, soaking up the pool of liquid color, which runs right into the brush. Then wash out the brush once again—never let acrylic color dry in the brush—and the job is done.

  If you’ve had lots of experience with traditional watercolor, your wash will be smoot
h and even, with no trace of irregularity. But if you’re like most students, you’ll be horrified to see that the dry wash contains lighter streaks, darker streaks, patches of lighter and darker color, and blotches where it looks like your brush contained too much water or too little. There may also be faintly hard edges where one stroke ends and another begins.

  Now try the same exercise again, this time adding a brushful of acrylic medium to the mixture of water and tube color in your saucer. Be sure to stir very carefully. Before you even touch the paper with your brush, you’ll notice two things about the liquid color in the saucer: the color will look a bit cloudy because of the milky tone of the acrylic medium; and the liquid paint will seem just a tiny bit thicker than it was when water was the only liquid you used in the mixture. The cloudiness will disappear, of course, as soon as you apply the wash to the painting surface; and the wash will dry completely clear. It’s the consistency of the paint that comes as a welcome surprise.

  When you begin to apply your strips of color, you’ll discover that the slight admixture of acrylic medium changes the flow of the wash. The pool of color rolls more smoothly down the paper. The paint seems to iron out to a more consistent, less irregular film, less likely to get streaks and hard edges between the strips of color. You’re also less inclined to get unpredictable light and dark areas. I can’t guarantee that adding a touch of acrylic medium will make a flat wash as easy as rolling off a log; it still takes practice, and you must still be prepared to ruin some sheets of paper. But there’s no question that a touch of acrylic medium makes the task less chancey.

  Graded Washes

  Once you’re reasonably sure that you can lay a flat wash efficiently, the next step is to try a graded wash. This is a color area that starts out light at one end and gradually darkens as it approaches the other end. Or it may go from dark to light. It is the classic sky wash, which moves from deep color at the top of the sheet to a delicate glow of light at the horizon. The process is essentially the same as laying a flat wash.

  (1) Tape or tack a fresh sheet of paper to your tilted drawing board as I described a moment ago.

  (2) Mix up a batch of color in your saucer as you did before. This time, you won’t need quite as much color.

  (3) Draw your first strip of color slowly and firmly across the top of the sheet, just as you did when you began your flat wash.

  (4) Before dipping your brush back into the saucer for a fresh load of color, pick up some clear water on the tip of the brush from the big jar or bowl. Then pick up some fresh color from the saucer, and quickly stir them together on the surface of the palette to make sure that you have a slightly lighter tone. Then draw your second strip across the paper, slightly overlapping the first strip and pulling the pool of liquid color down to the bottom of the second strip. You’ll see that the second strip is just a bit lighter than the first, although the two strips should merge and not look like a dark strip and a light strip side by side.

  Sand Dunes by Joseph L. C. Santoro, A.W.S., acrylic on watercolor paper, 20”x24”. The painter describes his procedure: “I first made several thumbnail sketches about 2”x3” in pencil to plan my composition and tonal values. The sky was the only area that I wet before painting, for I did not want any hard edges. ” Painted in transparent color throughout, Sand Dunes combines wet-in-wet technique in the sky, multiple superimposed washes on the dunes, and a rich accumulation of drybrush in the scrubby foreground growth. Thus, there’s an interesting contrast between the soft edges of the clouds, the hard edges of the dunes and their shadows, and the roughness of the drybrush passages. (Photo M. Grumbacher, Inc. )

  Rue Opera by Richard Brough, acrylic on watercolor paper, 16”x20”. This architectural study was painted in just two hours. The artist explains that he used acrylic “in a manner similar to watercolor. I washed the basic tones in the large areas first, ” knowing that with acrylic “you do not disturb the under color with the glazes applied. ” The architectural detail is developed in a series of transparent strokes, which tend to remain individual strokes rather than coalesce into a wash of continuous tone. To retain the casual flavor of a picture painted in “one stand from start to finish, to retain the original thought and spontaneity,” Brough has purposely left strips of white space between many of his strokes. (Photo courtesy M. Grumbacher, Inc.)

  (5) Repeat the process of picking up water on the brush and then some liquid color, adding more water and less color to each successive brushload. Each strip you draw across the page will be lighter than the preceding strip. In the same way, the pool of color will get paler and paler as it rolls down the sheet. If you add enough water to the last few strokes, the wash will gradate to almost pure white paper at the very bottom of the sheet.

  (6) Wash out your brush once again, flick out the excess water, and use the tip of the brush to soak up the pale pool of water at the bottom of the sheet.

  You may also want to try reversing the process as some watercolorists do. This means adding more color and less water with each successive stroke. Thus, you get a wash which is lightest at the top and darkest at the bottom. If you live in an industrial area where there’s often a layer of smog along the horizon the sky gets lighter as your eye moves up and this reverse gradation will be familiar.

  As you did with the flat wash exercise, you should try a graded wash first with just water and tube paint. Now you’re even more likely to get streaks and hard edges. Then try the same thing with a brushload of acrylic medium mixed into the wash. The paint will go on much more smoothly and you’ve got a much better chance of getting a smooth, even gradation.

  Now, what can you do with those streaky, blotchy washes that didn’t come out well? One of the miraculous things about acrylic is that each wash dries waterproof. This means that you can go over an unsuccessful wash and try again—and again. The second wash won’t disturb the first and get you into even more trouble. Try laying one, two, or even three flat washes over one that hasn’t turned out right. Try the same thing with a graded wash that hasn’t turned out right. You probably can’t hide the streaks and blotches altogether, but the later washes may veil your earlier mistakes and improve things more than you might think.

  As you learn to lay washes with acrylic watercolor, it’s important to experiment with different proportions of water and medium. Depending upon your very personal technique, you may prefer more medium or less. It’s also worthwhile to discover just how much acrylic medium you can add; oddly enough, too much medium can cause streaks.

  Once you’ve mastered the flat wash, you must master the graded wash, which is equally important. A graded wash can move from dark at the top to light at the bottom—as you see here—can go from light to dark, or even from dark to light to dark again.

  The dark wash is the most difficult of all effects in traditional watercolor painting. Acrylic makes the job much easier. Since a wash of acrylic becomes insoluble when it dries, you can lay a series of light washes on top of one another until you get the dark tone you want. Several light washes are much easier to apply than one dark one!

  A dark, graded wash—extremely difficult in traditional watercolor—can be executed in one of two ways. Either you can put down a series of pale graded washes, one over the other. Or you can begin by putting down a couple of light, graded washes, and then put a series of flat light washes over these to get the density you want. The secret, of course, is that light washes are a great deal easier to lay than dark ones. The odds are against your laying an effective dark wash in one go, while it’s comparatively easy to get the same effect in a series of light washes.

  In Chapter 4, I explained the difference between dye colors and pigment colors and pointed out that dyes penetrate the paper, while pigments rest on top. In general, it takes more skill to lay a wash with a dye color, which is more apt to cause streaks if you hesitate or fumble. The pigment colors are easier.

  So try laying a flat wash and a graded wash with every single color on your palette. No two co
lors will behave alike. Each one has its quirks, and it’s vital that you discover what they are.

  Dark Washes

  If you’ve wondered why so few night scenes are painted in watercolor, it’s because dark washes are so difficult. Most watercolorists—even professionals—avoid them like the plague. It’s very hard to lay a really dark wash without streaks or irregularities. And if the wash doesn’t come out right the first time, you’re taking your life into your hands if you go back into the wash and try to correct it. There’s so much color piled up on the paper, the odds are ten to one that you’ll get more streaks and blotches if you try to even out the tone with a second wash over the first.

  In traditional watercolor painting, the recommended method of laying a really dark wash is to mix up a cup, glass, or saucer of liquid color that’s just the tone you want. You have to use plenty of color and test the tone out on a scrap of paper to make sure it’s right before you start painting. You have just one chance to get the wash right. When you’ve got the tone you want, you lay the wash just the way you would a flat or graded wash. You then watch it dry and pray that you don’t get too many streaks, because you can’t touch up the dry, dark wash without picking up color.