Experimental Watercolor Lab

This week I taught a class on experimental techniques in watercolor. I found a very good book by Heather Smith Jones called Water Paper Paint, and it gave me a lot of the ideas for this class. This book is young and current, and shows a lot of wonderful artists working right now in the medium of watercolor in new and interesting ways. 

I started by collecting materials and thinking about the things that an artist might want to work on. The different experimental techniques are useful to artists working in different ways (tight or expressive) and are important to play with every once in a while, in order to break out of our comfort zone and evolve as artists. Here are a few to try:

1. Masking Frisket film, Liquid Frisket (masking fluid) and wax crayon.

 2. Blowing/Spraying A straw to blow on the paint, toothbrush/ paintbrush to spray and splatter (go Pollock!).

 3. Stamps/ Textures So many things can be made into stamps. Make sure it's not too greasy, so the paint can stick to it. Here I used various packing materials and crepe paper.

 4. Water Soluble Pencils or other media. Mix it with the watercolor, see what happens!

5. Surface+White Use unusual surfaces to work on, like cardboard, toned paper, vellum (first image in the post was made on vellum), or random materials found around the house. Also try white (here I used Gouache) or other opaque tools to go over the watercolor. Example: chalk, pastels, oils sticks, acrylic paint etc.

Keep track of your experiments, Take notes on each experiment so you can use it in the future. Even if you don't like %90 of what you did the process will give you new ideas for your next projects. This is a very good thing to do every once in a while, especially when you're stuck and feel uninspired. Start playing, go through your garage for scraps of fabric or packaging, look at books and see what other artists have tried. If you see something interesting or cool, why not try it?!

Happy playing!