This post is long due. I have started this experiment right after the first part of this post, but I've become to busy painting that made me wonder if this is still relevant when someone can gain this knowledge through practice and observation. Just the same, I hope somebody might find it useful.
One of the watercolor concepts that has always eluded my understanding is the "wet on wet technique" The are many tutorials online and most of them simply describes it as an application of wet paint on still wet paint on paper or sometimes an application of wet paint on paper pre-wetted with water. I've also read about avoiding applying wet paint on damp paper since it will produce unwanted effects. Some text even mentioned to watch out for the shininess of the paper. The question still remains with me: how much wetness should the paper have? What should be the water to paint ratio in the brush? Is there any scale to measure paper wetness? With these questions I've set out to do an experiment in order to find out what I could measure, in order to at least, get consistent results we want when painting.
This experiment is to determine amount of dispersion the watercolor solution will do on wet paper. My initial thought on this is if I could "measure" the drying time of the paper then I would know when to apply the paint. I was wrong.
My first test shows that even on the same area size, the time it took to lose the shininess (indication that there is water on the paper surface) varies from 1 minute to as much as 10 minutes.
One of the watercolor concepts that has always eluded my understanding is the "wet on wet technique" The are many tutorials online and most of them simply describes it as an application of wet paint on still wet paint on paper or sometimes an application of wet paint on paper pre-wetted with water. I've also read about avoiding applying wet paint on damp paper since it will produce unwanted effects. Some text even mentioned to watch out for the shininess of the paper. The question still remains with me: how much wetness should the paper have? What should be the water to paint ratio in the brush? Is there any scale to measure paper wetness? With these questions I've set out to do an experiment in order to find out what I could measure, in order to at least, get consistent results we want when painting.
This experiment is to determine amount of dispersion the watercolor solution will do on wet paper. My initial thought on this is if I could "measure" the drying time of the paper then I would know when to apply the paint. I was wrong.
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| A- 10mins, B - 1 min., C- 3 mins. |
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| Trying to read the paper wetness in stages I can identify |
