Elizabeth Sanford

I have a new favorite sketchbook, and I’m using it to record things I find on my walks! Wonder which kind and what techniques I used to paint this oak leaf? You can find out next month if you’ve signed up for email updates; I’ll reveal the details in February!

ANSWER TO MYSTERY TECHNIQUE #76:

This is a fun experiment to try with masking fluid. You’ll also need a rubber cement pickup. Put a layer of masking fluid on dry watercolor paper. If you do an underpainting first like I did, make it a little stronger in case some of the paint sticks to the masking. I used a cotton swab and a piece of plastic to quickly spread the masking fluid over the area. After it dried, I dragged a corner of the rubber cement pickup over the surface to pull up the masking in diagonal streaks; then I added a blue-gray layer of watercolor paint. When the paint dried, I removed the rest of the masking, and this is what it looked like:

To make a more complex texture, I repeated the entire process. Here’s what it looked like before I finished removing the rest of the second masking fluid layer:

And here’s the final image again with all the masking removed: