Having
been the the kitchen for my last post with the cling film, I thought
I would carry on the theme and look at using salt with watercolour.
This is a very simple technique to explain, the difficultly with
using salt is it can be unpredictable.
Firstly
lets look at how to use salt. Most of my students suggest that rock
salt is the best, however I find that just normal table salt will
work as well. The larger the crystal the more pigment it will suck
out. While the paint is wet drop the salt onto the paper and then
wait until the paint has dried and then brush the salt off. The salt
will stuck the pigment out of an area around the salt in a star
shape. You could use this effect for, snow or flowers, or stars or
for anywhere you just want a little more texture.
The
problems with this technique is if the paint is too dry the salt can
not act on it, if the paint is too wet it will just swamp the salt
and again it will not do anything.
There
are four levels of wetness
1 –
Very Dry, the paper is warm to touch and the salt will drop off when
tilted, and not make any effect.
2 –
Damp, the paper looks dry and is not shiny but it feels cold and damp
to the touch. This is too dry for the salt to work, but may still be
damp enough for the paint to have soft edges.
3 –
Wet, the paper is shiny but you can see the texture of the paper.
This is the wetness that you want when you use salt.
4 - Very
wet, the water is a pool on the paper and it is very shiny. There
will be a puddle on the paper maybe the paper has cockled and a
puddle has formed. This is too wet for the salt and will just swamp
it and not have any effect.
If the
salt is placed too close together in a lump it will not work very
well either. Very large pieces of salt can remove an area the size of
a coin, smaller grains will just make a star a couple of mm across.
What do
you think, have you tried this? How did it go?
