I just remembered a great bit of info I learned in my watercolor class! I can’t believe I haven’t put this up yet!
So, for those of you who aren’t as familiar with watercolor, one of the very first things you learn is that there is no eraser. Unlike opaque paints like oil or acrylic, watercolor is too transparent to paint over your mistakes. You’re stuck with all your mistakes.
Or rather, you were stuck with all your mistakes. Until you learn about this amazing product. Watercolor Ground, as my teach described it, is essentially watercolor paper ground up with water and sold in liquid form. (there’s obviously a little more to it than that, but I don’t know the details) So, when you mess up, you can paint this on and start all over with a fresh layer of paper.
Let’s all just let out a huge sigh of relief. Watercoloring was so stressful before I knew about this stuff!
My teacher suggested Daniel Smith brand and I trust her judgement! Click on the photo for Amazon pricing!
***Do keep in mind- this stuff is great to fix small errors but you’re not going to love the effect if you use it to cover up half of your painting and then start again. You can watercolor over it- but it doesn’t look exactly the same as your paper so covering big areas becomes pretty noticable. It’s best for mistakes that are small (I’d say well under 1″x1″ but that’s just my opinion) or for bringing back your whites that you’ve accidentally painted over (it works perfectly for that, even if your white areas are pretty big) If you’d like to see how it looks after its painted over, check out my Kirtland, Ohio painting. This was the first time I used ground to cover up a big area. I regretted it! Look at the top of the painting, the tree directly to the right of the Kirtland Temple has a weird dark splotch in the center. That’s the watercolor ground! Click on the image to enlarge and see exactly what’s happening. You’ll start to understand why it works great for little things but not huge areas! ***