by Wendon Blake
If you’ve suffered through the dark wash nightmare with traditional watercolor, you’ll find acrylic watercolor the answer to your prayers. Because each wash of acrylic dries waterproof and won’t be disturbed by the next wash laid over it, you can lay a dark wash as a series of lighter washes, methodically building up from light to dark. Every beginning watercolorist knows that it’s a lot easier to lay a pale wash than a dark one. So you needn’t mix the final dark tone in a cup and pray that you’ve gotten the tone right. You mix a medium tone and then lay one flat or graded wash over another until you get the exact density you want.
Ault Town by William Strosahl, A.W.S., acrylic and collage on gesso board, 20”x24”, collection Rosemary Strosahl. Acrylic lends itself equally well to smooth washes, like transparent watercolor, and to irregular, textured washes like those in this painting. These broad, streaky strokes give the transparent and semi-transparent color a powerful sense of movement and rhythm. The viewer can sense the presence of the painter’s hand, sweeping the color across the painting surface. The vitality of this picture stems from the contrasts between the geometric, architectural subject and the rough, varied texture of the paint. The collage elements are interwoven so delicately that they harmonize perfectly with the painted passages and become almost invisible—they simply add an unobtrusive touch of texture.
Houses of Bangkok by Ralph Fabri, N.A., A.W.S., acrylic on watercolor paper. A charcoal layout was reinforced with thin yellow ochre outlines, and the artist began by painting the cloudy sky. “I painted this into the roofs and trees,” says Fabri, “then established the forms and colors of the subject with thin washes. Next, I painted the water of the canal and the dark section under the houses all across, before indicating the stakes in various colors. Also the tree trunks and foliage. I added details with direct brushstrokes, using little or no water. ” The artist points out that the waterproof quality of acrylic “made it especially easy to paint the fences right over the background with a small bristle brush. At the end, I pulled certain parts of the picture, such as the dilapidated yellow and red striped awning, together by applying thin washes with a flat sable brush. I used reddish washes over the dark sides of the houses, and ochre wash over the water. ” (Photo courtesy M. Grumbacher, Inc. )
If you want to lay a dark graded wash, you can put down a couple of graded washes and a couple of flat washes over them; the first two washes will establish the gradation, while the next two will darken the sheet evenly, allowing the gradation to shine through.
Be sure to try this with just tube color and water, then with tube color, acrylic medium, and water. You’ll find that the addition of some acrylic medium not only makes the job easier, but allows the color to retain a certain degree of luminosity despite the darkness.
If this is your first experience of laying one wash of acrylic watercolor over another, you’ll make another delightful discovery. You’ll wonder why each successive wash seems easier than the one beneath it. The later washes go on more smoothly and evenly than the earlier ones. What’s happening, of course, is that the acrylic emulsion is progressively toughening the surface of the watercolor paper, making the sheet slightly less absorbent each time you apply a new layer of color. In Chapter 3, you may recall my mentioning that the relatively nonabsorbent papers take color more easily; thus, it should be no surprise that a surface which has been toughened by several layers of acrylic paint will be easier to paint on.
You also have the chemistry of acrylic paint working in your favor. It’s the nature of a dried acrylic film to attract and hold a fresh layer of acrylic paint applied over it. The two layers lock together and become one continuous film. They reinforce each other. This is exactly the opposite of traditional watercolor, in which each successive layer of paint is a threat to the layer underneath. Chalk up one more point in favor of acrylic.
Multiple Overwashes
One of the great advantages of acrylic over traditional watercolor is that successive overwashes can be applied without any fear that a fresh wash will disturb the dried color underneath. Once a layer of color is dry, it’s there to stay, and you can put fresh color over it without any danger of the dry color dissolving and producing a muddy mixture. Here are four successively darker washes, laid over one another. Try this with various color combinations.
Think about what I’ve said and try a series of experiments in which you lay a series of washes of various colors and densities over one another. Building on the exercises you tried in Chapter 4, try laying warm colors over cool colors, cool colors over warm colors, flat washes over graded washes,
Winter Repair Yard by Henry Gasser, N.A., A.W.S., acrylic on mounted watercolor paper, 22”x30”, collection Milton Gelman. In this complicated interplay of architecture and natural landscape, the artist has used a broad vocabulary of wash techniques. The sky is an irregular graded wash. The buildings combine flat and graded washes. The rich darks of the shadow sides of the buildings make use of the multiple overwashes for which acrylic is especially valuable in building deep, transparent tones. The rough texture of the paper asserts itself frequently through passages like the strokes in the foreground, where it is helpful in rendering the weathered wooden posts.
and vice versa. Here are some of the fascinating things you’ll discover:
(1) The second wash will modify and enrich the first without disrupting the underlying wash by causing streaks or irregularities where there weren’t any before. The underlying wash will remain as smooth as ever.
(2) Because the second wash won’t disrupt the first, the two won’t stir together and produce the muddy tones which are a constant threat in traditional watercolor. Although it should be obvious that two washes are less transparent than one, and three washes are even less transparent, a series of overwashes in acrylic watercolor will probably retain more luminosity than a similar series in traditional watercolor.
(3) This means that you can build up a color effect gradually, in a series of very delicate stages, and develop color effects of greater richness and greater subtlety. If a wash is too cool, for example, an almost imperceptible overwash of warm color will modify it to exactly the hue that you want. The underlying color will be modified without being demolished. Titian talked about applying thirty or forty layers of transparent color in an oil painting, and theoretically this is possible in acrylics as well. I doubt that you’ll ever try thirty or forty overwashes, but it’s fair to say that acrylic watercolor will allow you more overwashes than traditional watercolor with less loss of luminosity and less danger of turning them into mud.
(4) Because acrylic watercolor allows you this kind of color buildup, you can achieve much deeper, richer color—much greater weight of color—than you may be accustomed to in traditional watercolor. It’s the nature of traditional watercolor to lend itself to light, airy pictures. But if your taste runs to sombre, moody effects, they’ll be a lot easier to get in a series of acrylic washes.
(5) Because the paper grows less absorbent with each successive wash of acrylic watercolor, you’ll find that the drying time of later washes becomes longer than the drying time of earlier washes. The wet paint lies on the surface of the paper somewhat longer. This gives you the freedom and the leisure to change your mind and experiment with special effects in the final stages of the painting.
One note of warning. If you’re planning to do a painting that will contain a long series of superimposed washes, be careful about adding too much acrylic medium to your paint. Just a little will do. If you add too much medium to your washes, you may find that the painting surface becomes too tough, too nonabsorbent too early in the game. A tough, leathery skin may begin to form on the paper, which may become less responsive to the touch of the brush.
Semi-transparent Washes
As I’ve already said, most painters in traditional watercolor object violently to adding the slightest touch of opaque color to their transparent washes. They feel that opaque color destroys the delicacy of the medium, cuts dow
n luminosity, and encourages the painter to “cheat” by using opaque color to cover up his mistakes.
In traditional transparent watercolor painting, opaque color usually means Chinese white. This is a dense white which is inclined to turn your color chalky, producing an effect more like casein or pastel. As John Singer Sargent demonstrated, modifying transparent color with Chinese white can produce effects of great beauty, but transparency is sacrificed for greater weight and solidity.
If you’ve tried Chinese white in traditional watercolor painting, and rejected the idea, you’ll probably carry over the same objections to opaque white in acrylic watercolor painting. But suspend judgment until you’ve tried semi-transparent painting in the newer medium. Try a few experiments:
(1) Mix a wash of bright color and then add the faintest touch of acrylic white. When you apply this wash to paper, you’ll find that the color is less chalky than a similar wash in traditional watercolor modified by Chinese white. The acrylic white has added a ghostly delicacy to the transparent color which lies on the paper like a semi-transparent veil. The whiteness of the paper still shines through, almost as it would through a transparent wash.
(2) Now mix and apply another wash of pure, transparent color without adding any white. This wash should be a fairly deep, dark tone. When the dark wash is dry, mix a wash of some lighter color, then add a faint touch of white to the new wash. Apply the new, lighter wash over just half of the darker wash. Modified by the second wash, the original color becomes more subtle and melts back into space like the sun covered by a slight haze. Compare the two halves of the dark wash, and you’ll see that the part covered by the second wash is slightly less transparent, but still luminous.
Acrylic can be applied not only in transparent washes, but in hazy, semi-transparent washes. The vertical stroke is a wash of dark, transparent color; the horizontal stroke is a wash of lighter, semi-transparent color, which veils and lightens the darker color underneath. Try this experiment by adding just a touch of white to various colors, and then wash this colored haze over various underlying tones.
For this experiment, try an underlying wash of bright, deep red, and an overwash of yellow with just a touch of white. Try the same semi-transparent yellow over a wash of deep blue. If you don’t use too much white, you’ll get subtle, luminous colors with a minimum of chalkiness.
(3) Paint another wash of bright, deep color—like red or blue—and cover half of it with a wash of a lighter color, like yellow, adding much more white this time, so that the overwash partially hides the underwash. Some red or blue should come through, but the overwash should become a bit chalky now. When the overwash is dry, cover it with a third wash of pure, transparent color, with no white added.
The result of this three step experiment will be a complex and fascinating color effect. The first transparent wash will peek through the second, semi-transparent wash, and the third transparent wash will eliminate the chalkiness of the second wash, restoring a feeling of transparency to the whole color passage.
(4) Apply still another bright, deep transparent color. When this is dry, apply a few thick dabs of really opaque color. In other words, squeeze out some white and just add a touch of transparent color to the white. This will give you a really opaque yellow or pink or whatever color you prefer. Lay some strokes of this opaque color over the underlying transparent wash. Now mix a wash of a third color—completely transparent, no white—and lay this over the entire passage, covering both the first transparent wash and the strokes of opaque color. Surprisingly, the entire passage will come out looking transparent. Covered with a wash of transparent color, even the thick, opaque strokes will come through as glowing notes of light. The opaque strokes will actually intensify the transparency of the overlying color.
If you’ve tried Chinese white in traditional transparent watercolor painting, you’ll know that these effects aren’t possible. Chinese white turns almost any mixture chalky. And you can’t wash transparent color over a thick passage of Chinese white without picking up the opaque color and simply spreading the chalkiness through the painting. But used with care, and not overdone, acrylic white will integrate with your transparent color and won’t destroy the luminosity of your painting.
Silent Preparation by James Carlin, A.W.S., acrylic on 300 lb. watercolor paper, 24”x30”. The artist has handled acrylic with the spontaneity and transparency of traditional watercolor, but he has taken advantage of the density of the newer medium in the deep, rich darks of the waves, in the shadows beneath the boats, and in the shadow parts of the figures. While a wash of middle tone is still wet, it’s easy to strike back into the wet color with a stroke of thick acrylic which blends wet-in-wet, as you see in the shadows beneath the crests of the waves. The foam is bare paper touched with water at the edges to create a wet-in-wet blend with the darker waves.
One important tip about washes of semi-transparent acrylic. A wash that contains a bit of acrylic white generally looks more opaque when it’s wet than when it’s dry. When you brush on the semi-transparent wash, you’ll be horrified to see how white it looks; but when it dries, you may be equally surprised to see that it virtually disappears. You may actually wish you’d added more white for just a bit more covering power.
If you’re trying to create an extremely delicate, semi-transparent veil, using mostly water and very little tube colour, be sure to add enough acrylic medium to the mixture so that it flows on smoothly; this kind of wash is apt to dry to a somewhat irregular surface if you use water alone.
These semi-transparent washes serve two useful purposes, impossible with Chinese white in traditional transparent watercolor technique. Such washes lend a fascinating sense of atmosphere in landscape and seascape painting, particularly when you’re striving for the effect of fog, or haze, or a rainy day. For example, you can paint a rock formation in full, rich color then paint a haze over it, so that the rocks melt back into space and give an effect of foggy distance. Or you can create a heat haze in a summer landscape.
The other value of such washes is to tone down colors which may be too insistent and out of key with the rest of the picture. You can even alter the hue if you do it with care. Suppose you have a garish, insistent red and you’d rather have a soft, melting orange. A wash of yellow, with a touch of white, will turn the red to orange and create an almost invisible haze that pushes the color back into its place in the total color scheme of the picture. If the yellow contains little enough white, no one but you will know it’s there.
Corrective Washes
Because traditional watercolor remains water soluble even when it’s dry, it’s obviously a lot easier to correct your mistakes in the older medium. If the paper is tough enough to take the punishment, you can scrub out a defective passage with a bristle brush, or with a sponge. You can even soak the whole sheet in your bathtub, or under a running hose to get rid of most of the color and start over.
Because the new acrylics dry to such a tough, insoluble film, it’s practically impossible to wash out any mistakes you might make. True, if you dilute your tube color with an enormous amount of water and don’t add any acrylic medium, this very pale wash won’t stick to the paper very tenaciously, and you may be able to scrub it away. But most acrylic washes will resist the most ferocious scrubbing.
Since you can’t remove the dried paint, the only way to correct a mistake is to add more paint in the form of a corrective wash. There are two kinds of corrective washes: opaque and semi-opaque. Here’s how they work.
If you’ve painted a section which is a total flop, and you want to go back to the pure white of the paper, the simplest solution is to apply a thin, opaque layer of white. Thin the tube white with matt acrylic medium and a little water, brush the paint on very smoothly, and you’ll retain the original texture of the paper. You can then repaint the passage over the opaque white wash just as if you’re painting on fresh paper. The only difference will be that the surface of the corrected area will be somewhat less absorbent t
han the original paper.
I might add that your corrective opaque wash can be any color, not just white. If you’re repainting a clump of trees, for example, you might decide that the opaque corrective wash should be yellow to provide a luminous underpainting for the wash of green that will complete the trees. Or if you’re painting out a sky, and want to try a sunset effect, the opaque corrective wash might be a pale orange.
Sometimes, of course, you want to modify a passage that hasn’t come off, rather than paint it out and start over. You may want to hold onto some of the color or texture, just not all of it. Here’s where you can try a semi-opaque wash of white or perhaps some other color. Let’s think about that clump of trees again. Perhaps the shape and value are right, and you like the rough brushwork that’s already there, but the color has turned muddy. A semi-opaque wash of white or soft yellow might let you keep the general shape, tone or texture, but will lighten the clump of trees just enough to receive a fresh wash of color.
