Watercolor Grounds

 Watercolor Grounds

Grounds are mediums that enable you to paint on substrates--surfaces--that you might not be able to paint watercolor on. They can also change it, add textures, or add background color.

We broke a piece of paper (or some used matte board) into 8 sections, and applied different grounds in 6 of those sections: Titanium White, Light Dimensional, Gold, Buff, Black, and Transparent. The last two spaces were reserved for Textural Medium and Lift Preparation. (see below) Before putting the transparent ground on, we put a mark or picture on the area.

We drew pictures to paint in each section. Here are a few ideas.

We tried painting on each section. Try to use a picture with texture on the dimensional ground.

On the black, use light, paint lightened with white, or iridescent medium. 

Here is an owl done on the dimensional ground.

What I'd like people to notice are three things:

1. The ease of painting on ground

2. Whether or not the paint can be lifted

3. How bright and intense the paint appears.

In the section for lifting Prep, Apply lifting Prep on half the paper.

Paint staining colors in bars--pthalos, purples, or reds. When dry,

try to lift part for on the prep side, and on the untreated side.

Compare how much or how easily it can be be lifted.

On the texture side, just paint a wash and see the kind of texture

it creates. In the picture below, I used gum Arabic on the clouds and

texture medium on the red ground.