Tide Rising

Tide Rising

watercolor

12 x 12 inches

©Ann Thompson Nemcosky

This painting came about with the help of a happy accident. Wanting to work a little larger, I stretched a piece of watercolor paper. After I had sketched in my composition I decided to try masking out the whites with a Fineline Masquepen instead of my usual brush. Because I have only used it once or twice I first had to do some serious cleaning out of the tip before it would work for me. Well, the masking fluid came out really fast! I had to work quickly to lay it in everywhere I wanted it to go.

(these work-in-progress shots were taken with my ipad and are not acurate color, 

but you get the idea)

In some places it was so think it started to drip and run, so I grabbed an old piece of sponge and smeared and dabbed the masking fluid into place. Sometimes masking fluid is a really handy thing to use for saving whites in watercolor, but most of the time I am unhappy with the results from using it because of the hard edges it leaves. And now with this piece I would have hard edges everywhere! So I decided to go with that. I kept those hard edges in mind as I laid in color washes.

And you can see just how much masking fluid came off this painting. There's the big ball of it at the top of the picture. Once I had the masking removed, with a great deal of restraint I added a few more passes of color and very selectively softened just a few of those hard edges.

I am more than pleased with the result, despite my masking fluid mishap at the start. So now the challenge will be whether I can do a painting this way again, only on purpose next time.