Category Archives: Mystery Technique

Mystery Technique

Mystery Technique #153

August 20, 2025 – 10:25 pm

Curious about the techniques used here? You can learn more next month if you’ve signed up for email updates! 

ANSWER TO MYSTERY TECHNIQUE #152:

It’s fun to create irregular shapes with a spray bottle! I started by painting the patch of blue sky, adding some gouache to the watercolor for more drama. Getting the paper unevenly wet with a spray bottle made it much easier to mimic the edges of the pale cloud. Next I painted the cloud in layers, beginning with delicate washes of pink and yellow. I finished with a dark gray mixture of Hydrus watercolors and Winsor & Newton Granulation Medium, spraying the paper and tilting it for more texture.

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Mystery Technique

Mystery Technique #152

July 20, 2025 – 9:13 pm

Curious about the techniques used here? You can learn more next month if you’ve signed up for email updates! 

ANSWER TO MYSTERY TECHNIQUE #151:

I started with an abstract underpainting of diluted acrylic ink. After this layer dried, I masked out tree shapes with clear contact paper and applied loose washes of granulating watercolors with pipettes, mixing the colors wet-in-wet. I also added some Winsor & Newton Granulation Medium to increase the texture.

I let this layer dry, then continued using pipettes to paint the trunks. To create the texture of fine spatters, I rewet parts of the painting and scraped flecks of Inktense Blocks over the wet surface.

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Mystery Technique

Mystery Technique #151

June 20, 2025 – 10:25 pm

Curious about the techniques used here? You can learn more next month if you’ve signed up for email updates! 

ANSWER TO MYSTERY TECHNIQUE #150:

You can add more texture to your paintings with Derwent Inktense Blocks! I started by using pipettes to create several layers of undulating shapes with diluted yellow and blue acrylic inks, mixing them wet-in-wet to make various greens. After these dried, I painted the background with a pale mixture of yellow, green and blue watercolors plus some Winsor & Newton Granulation Medium. Next I quickly shaved off flecks of yellow, blue and magenta Inktense Blocks with my painting knife. These stuck to the wet paint and added floating specks of color on top of the other layers. 


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