Watercolor Gift

Did you miss Using Broken Watercolor Crayons?

The spray bottle of water holds 2 ounces of water. I had filled it nearly full of water but not quite before I put the half a watercolor crayon inside. It sat there undisturbed until tonite. I shook it up - it was a lovely dark shade of blue before and after shaking it - I could not see through it to tell if all of the crayon had dissolved or not which seemed like a good thing - I held it up to the light and it was not see through at all.

I got out one of the watercolor canvas sheets and started spraying the colored water on it - it did splatter nicely … except I did not have enough paper toweling around the edges so my drawing table got a coat of blue spray watercolor too …

It was a nice light blue with dark blue splatter spots the first coat - the more I sprayed, the darker it got. I basically sprayed a lot on the entire canvas sheet … it looks like I have about a half a bottle of liquid left so I must have sprayed one ounce on the 9″ x 12″ watercolor canvas sheet … it lake puddled in a couple places or so … I let it sit that way while I went and got a paper towel then I lifted the entire wet off and what was left was a very nice light blue that will work quite well as a background for a seascape … a little bit of color and spots sort of nicely placed … I basically sort of stained the canvas sheet in very nice light blue splotches when I was finished.

If I had done this with watercolor paper … I might have had a lake all over the floor and the drawing table … the puddled water just sat there on the canvas sheet … the buckling was just enough to make it hold the sopping wet color [I knew before leaving it that it was not going to run all over the place - I had paper towels right there but I have a different texture of them in the kitchen so I was prepared in advance to mop quickly if I needed to do so!]

This experiment reminded me of when I was a kid with a box full of broken crayons … my grandmother would help me to melt them with wax to make candles out of them - she handled the hot pan and did the pouring into the candle molds with wicks … coloring the candle wax was a lot of fun for me … and perhaps that is where and how I got my adventurous spirit for trying different things in the arts and crafts world.

For my grandmother, it was a matter of waste not - she had been through the Depression so she squeezed every last drop of usable anything from everything. I didn’t have the same viewpoint … it was more like chemistry experiments to me.

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Last week-end, my grandson came over and painted with me. We used the watercolor crayons and during the painting process, he broke one. I was not upset but he was. They are crayons after all and in use, it is to be expected his or my fingers will hold it too tight and one will break. I was using them this morning (laying in color using the tip) and a different one broke, my dark blue - almost directly in the center of the crayon.

Dry: I peeled the paper off the bigger half and used it sideways on my dry 140 lb cold press watercolor block paper to put some light dark blue color down at the bottom of my seascape. I got traces of pigment on my fingers and on the paper … only the top of the rough paper took color - the troughs are not filled with color like they are when I use the tip of the crayon to lay in color. The plan is for it to be covered with sand but this is a nice first color layer to work on harmony and tonal values. Plus, I do not know exactly yet where the sand will be so some could show there after all.

Wet: I got out a sheet of the watercolor canvas, sprayed it liberally with water so it was quite wet. Then I took the blue crayon piece sideways and dragged it back and forth across the entire sheet. It is a bit messy and I had to wash my fingers of course afterwards [I still have a light blue stain on my fingers (if you want, wear some plastic gloves to do this to keep from staining your skin)]. In the space of a minute - I have a lovely blue background dark wash on the watercolor canvas sheet for whatever I may want to put on next - whether it be abstract, seascape or perhaps a tree study.

Spray:Now, I am going to take the smaller half and immerse it into water in my spray bottle to melt it into watery blue pigment. My goal is to get a sprayable blue watercolor. I have not done this before so it is an experiment - I may put in too much water and it might be a very faint blue. I’ll find out. I have no idea how long it might take to dissolve … if it is too light a blue, I can always add more paint to it to see if I can get it darker.