Watercolour

I'm going to use some of the clean line drawings I've done, make prints and experiment with colouring them.

On reading a chapter in a book Ive realised some of the possibilities.

First off, watercolour needs to be built up in layers, its transparent, so you apply alot of the darker areas first. The paper, where standard sketchbook paper is fine, is important as absorbancy plays a part in the finished image. I could also press my own.

Dry brush techniques and soaking paper for wet brush on wet paper technique sound interesting, you can also lift wet paint off with a dry brush and scratch paint off when the image is dry exposing bright white paper underneath.

French writer Victor Hugo mixed coffee, burnt toast, soot, dust and blood in with his.

There is a process called Limning where you mix it with egg white to get a shiny finish.

Anish Kapoor mixed earth in with gouache.

This image by Peter de Wint includes the processes I was talking about where you lift off paint with a dry brush, the hat of the woman washing in the river is done by scratching or cutting a layer of paper off and the reeds are scratchings too apparently. Interesting stuff.


This is the process of Limning, where you mix egg white into the paint. Its by Issac Oliver and it was painted on "velum" which is prepared animal skin. They prepared it by pasting it onto a playing card or similar, then burnishing it to make the surface smoothe. I think burnishing means to polish.