Elizabeth Sanford

Want to know how I turned this watercolor painting into a three-dimensional object? You can find out the special techniques I used next month if you’re signed up for email updates!

ANSWER TO MYSTERY TECHNIQUE #93:

Although paper is my favorite painting surface now, I painted large abstractions on canvas for years — most of them were over 6 feet tall! Here’s the closeup again:

I started with unprimed canvas and coated it with heavily diluted gesso to get a stained effect. To help direct the flow for each poured color, I used pushpins to attach the unstretched canvas to the wall at various angles and repeated the process many times to layer the colors. Each layer had to dry before the next could be added. My favorite tools were paper cups; after mixing a new color, I wet the next shape with water, then pinched the top of the cup to form a small applicator tip and poured fluid paint into the wet shape. I learned the hard way to position containers under all the pours; the first time I tried it, I accidentally created a colorful “river” that flowed off the canvas onto the plastic underneath and across the studio floor!