Learning to Control Watercolor (Part II)

     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.

A- 10mins, B - 1 min., C- 3 mins.

     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.

Trying to read the paper wetness in stages I can identify

     Further into the research I've stumbled upon a discussion in WetCanvas about how paint consistency can be categorized as tea, coffee, milk, cream, and butter which was devised by  Joseph Zbukvic. For paper  wetness, it was described as wet, moist, damp and dry. The paint consistency analogy is fairly easy to understand. But for paper wetness, wet and moist is still confusing for me. 

    So in my next test, I tried determining the timing by "reading" the shininess. Maybe I could determine the difference between moist and damp.

The magenta is of coffee consistency applied to (tea) yellow. (A)Paper surface is very wet. Water beads forms on the surface, once the brush comes in contact with the wet paper, it instantly disperses. (B) Surface is still shiny, like a thin film of water covering the surface.(C) The paper has just lost its shininess. (D) Damp paper with a damp brush.

This is a tea on tea  consistency. I'm having a hard time trying to capture the stages of shininess on my mobile phone. Notice on the damp stage that the shininess is loss

     Below are diagrams in profile view of how I think the water interacts with the paper at different stages of wetness:

The wet stage. This is when the pigment particles can freely move in the water. There is also a noticeable beading on the boundaries especially if the paper is initially dry. Probably due to paper "sizing" and surface tension of the water

 The moist stage. A thin film of water covers the surface of the paper. The are still visible highlights on peaks of the paper

A little bit more before the damp stage. There is no more visible shininess on the paper surface, the water is just barely beneath the paper surface but applying pressure will make some water rise to the top.

My observations so far:

• Timing is everything.
• It is important to"read" the  shininess of the paper
• Have all the colors ready and mixed , you only have a small window to apply the colors when you need it.
• The thicker the paint the less it will disperse (cream) and thinner mixtures disperses well. (tea)
• I still have to verify this. Maybe like the general principle of painting light to dark, painting thin to thick applies as well.
• When executing wet on wet techniques and the "moist" stage has elapsed, it may be possible, depending on the effect, to redo the wet on wet technique as another layer, provided that you let the initial layer thoroughly dry.
• The somewhere between the moist and the damp stage is the best time to lift colors with a thirsty brush. or to scratch to bring out the whiteness.

Keep on practicing. Paint and paint some more.