Wednesday, March 29, 2017

Splitcoast Tutorial: Watercolor Marble

I had so much fun with this week's Watercolor Marble technique!


With some wet-into-wet painting and color layering, you can create beautiful marbled backgrounds. I used a variety of artist grade watercolors, ink, acrylic paint, and gesso on these samples, but you can use any water soluble medium you have.


This was the first background I did - the trick is to use a paper that will hold a lot of wetness - I used Fabriano stationery, which is one of my favorite papers to work with (I get the Portrait Folded Cards and cut them in half - I researched one time and that was the best value).


 This second card has some layers of ink and gesso for more contrast in the veining.


The third background is a little more simple, but I had some fun with the black, and more intricate veining.


Here you can see the effect of the black paint I was using - this is one of my favorite favorite paints to work with - it's Lunar Black by Daniel Smith. In the closeup below you can see how this paint separates into a gorgeous granulated wash - It's so much fun to use, and one of my favorites for shading when I paint.


 I wanted to share the brushes that I used for the finer veining - these are detail brushes for model painting, and they're so very fine and long - I think the longer one may have about 10 bristles. I just really liked the organic results I got from pulling these across the panel and through the paint, rather than using a fine round brush or regular liner to draw veins in.


These are from Silver, and they are from their collection of Ultra Mini brushes:

Hope you'll give this a try, and share your results in the gallery!
Thanks for stopping by!

8 comments:

  1. BEAUTIFUL WORK, DINA! I LOVE the results you got, AND I enjoy it when you share what your special tools are too! Thank you, Dina! ;) I will have to check out the tutorial today! THANK YOU! ;)

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  2. I love this! It really *does* look like marble...a project I will try post-retirement! Thanks for sharing.

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  3. Very beautiful. you used Gesso, how? just mixed it with the ink colors? I have not used it, so I am not sure why you would- for texture?

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    1. I just used it like paint - it's very opaque, which is what I wanted here.

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    2. These are gorgeous! Can you tell me the name and manufacturer of the sentiment on the first card? Thanks so much!

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  4. Wonderful cards Dina...thank you for sharing - this really looks like a lot of FUN!!!
    Paper Hugs,
    Jan

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  5. The cards are beautiful! I love the results you've achieved for the backgrounds. Watching the tutorial I was amazed by the simplicity of the technique. Just for once I have everything needed to give it a go (even the Fabriano stationery paper which I love to work on too). I discovered fairly recently that gesso makes a good paint as well as a primer. I am inspired!

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  6. Simply amazing. Hope to try this soon.

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