Using Salt with watercolour

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?

Allowing yourself to make mistakes.

Cling film placed on wet watercolour

My friend crashed his racing hovercraft in practice. We thought there was no need for this, the exit from the water was smooth and clear of any obstructions. Instead he choose to take a wider line through the reads and long grass to the side of the exit. As he came back with his hovercraft on a trailer, and the front all smashed up it was obvious this was not a good idea.

Why, we asked him had he tried such a line? His reply astonished me. He explained that during a race he might need to overtake a craft there and so he had to know if such a thing was possible. I had always concentrated on “the racing line” trying to always find the perfect line. Always trying to get my hovercraft to go as fast as possible, any deviation was a mistake. He was already was a fast driver, so he had started to experiment. This meant during a race he had more options, when faced with a hovercraft he wanted to get past he knew where and when he was able to. As hovercraft have no breaks, sometimes it was a choice between overtaking a slower craft or crashing. 

Salt makes little stars

Now when I am painting I take time to experiment, to allow myself to make mistakes. Last week I allowed a whole class to spend the afternoon just making a “mess”. As I explained we were not there to make a masterpiece – although if we happen to make one accidentally that would be OK.

We played with salt, cling film, granulating medium and much more. Everyone had a lovely time, they learnt many techniques they had not tried before. Although no one did create a masterpiece, everyone had some samples of something they could use in another piece of art.

Cling film can make good foliage.

I have learnt sometimes I have to give myself a safe environment where it is all right to make a mistake, because I will learn something from it, even if the only thing I learnt is not to try that again!

Cling film was used to create this dry stone wall

Have you allowed yourself to make any mistakes lately?