Elizabeth Sanford

This is a closeup of Unseen Omens II, one of the wall-hung watercolor sculptures from my Reshaping the Shadows exhibition. Wonder how I layered the space to create depth? You can find out next month if you’ve signed up for email updates; I’ll reveal the details in April!

ANSWER TO MYSTERY TECHNIQUE #66:

I began by painting a layer of branching shapes with a diluted mixture of Winsor & Newton Permanent Masking Fluid, acrylic matte medium, and acrylic white ink on 300 lb. Arches watercolor paper. After it dried, I wet the entire surface and used pipettes to drop diluted Hydrus watercolors mixed with Winsor & Newton Granulation Medium. The branching shapes of the first layer acted as resist, creating varied textural effects. After the paper dried, I used a craft knife to cut out tree shapes, then added shadows and magenta edges:

Now it’s the first layer of Keeping Secrets, a new watercolor sculpture.

Curious to know how this was done? You can find out about the special techniques I used if you’ve signed up for email updates; I’ll reveal the details next month!

ANSWER TO MYSTERY TECHNIQUE #65:

Last month’s Mystery Technique demonstrates the varied strokes you can make with Liner brushes. Here’s my collection, with the Universal Liners on the right:

First I partially wet the paper with a spray bottle and applied yellow with a Universal Liner; next I repeated the process with yellow-orange and red-orange. The final layer is a wet-in-wet mix of several different browns and red.

It’s hard to believe that these 2 Isabey brushes started out the same shape. The one on the right is a replacement for the other one; 20 years of use can really wear down the tip!