Well I finally finished off the tutorial on my Watercolor Pencil On Suede Board Page. I had pondered making this a completely separate lens but then thought it was such an obscure topic it would be best served by tagging it onto this Watercolor Pencil Technique Page especially since this painting was also done on suede.
Warning:
Be forewarned there is a gratuitous advert stuck in so you’ll subliminally click on it and and find yourself in the wonderful world of amazonia and unable to resist temptation you buy and buy and buy stuff. (because once you click through it doesn’t really matter at all what you buy I get a teeny tiny fraction of that sale.) And then when something like 100 million of my faithful readers do this I will be rich enough to become Queen Of All She Surveys. and while I suppose technically I kinda am that now, what I currently survey is a brick gallery in need of tuck pointing, a fat gallery cat napping, a half drunk 2 liter bottle of Diet Coke and a floor in need of vacuuming. So yeah I have a ways to go there.
And so in my ongoing plan for world domination (Insert evil Bwa-ha-ha laugh … followed by much coughing) you may be seeing more gratuitous ads, but I promise they will be relevant (even if I have to make something up.)
How To Use Masking Film With A Watercolor Pencil Painting on Suede
The Masking Film Tutorial is on Page 2 I’ve created a summary of the tutorial here but for a more detailed explanation in both photos and words be sure to visit the lens.
The first step of course it to apply the film.
Since this painting was done on a very light (almost white) board it was pretty important to keep it covered so I wouldn’t track and smudge my watercolor pencil (or worse still my water soluble Inktense pencils) all over. So once having gotten the drawing transfered onto the suede I covered it. Masking film is actually kinda expensive and the day I stopped at my local Hobby Lobby they were out. But they had a roll of book covering laying there it it was like $5 so I figured if it didn’t work it would be no great loss.
Klear Cover Grip-Tac Clear Book & Document Preserver 12×20″ 2 rolls
That is what I used for this painting and it worked really well. It had enough tack to cling but removed easily enough. However once removed it didn’t really adhere again well at all. I have no idea if actually masking film would have. I imagine the suede fibers that were pulled loose with the removal of the masking film were a large part to it’s not being functional after the initial use, and I would think this would be a similar problem with any masking film. But I really don’t know for sure.
So at this point I took a sharp scissors and cut away the masking film for the area I wanted to work in. In the photo I have a large scissors and they worked fairly well but I later swapped it out for a small pair which worked much better in the tight spaces.
For the first bird I took a pen and drew (traced over the drawing that still shows through on the suede board) on the masking film using that as my guide. But for the following birds I just cut extremely carefully along the paintings edge. The pen made cutting the masking film easier but is not entirely necessary. Do what works best for you.
I painted in the one bird, sprayed it with a workable fixative and then moved on to cutting out the next bird. This is pretty much a rinse and repeat until I got all the way to the end of my 5 birds.
NOTE:The mask does indeed keep you from tracking color all over but it doesn’t prevent it seeping in under it. So you must be extra careful around the edges. I usually added water within 3/8 inch of the edge and then just scrushed it over to the edge as best I could. Even being very careful I still had some wisking issues.
Removing the masking film and cleaning up the rough edges.
As I said there was some wisking issues to these needed to be fixed before I could call the painting done. I pulled up only the areas of masking film that I was working in at a time and then replaced the film before moving on. It didn’t stick nearly as well but it was better than nothing.
All the finishing work was done with a very sharp dry pencil.
The masking film will remain inplace until framing at which point I will spray one final time with a fixative and pop it in the frame.
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