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Enhancing your Watercolors
by Kirk Lybecker

     Every time I try to make a happy accident it winds up looking more labor intensive than the pyramids and phonier than a low budget science fiction film. I also see this as the principle paradox in watercolor. If you treat watercolor like an oil painting it will look overworked. If you treat it as a
spontaneous, action you have little control over the outcome. So I, the red blooded American that I am, opt for a technical solution.
     Needless to say I have figured out that there are ways to get around most any conundrum that art throws at you.( Other than why do you make it in the first place.) I suppose that I should give you some of my personal background in art. I got off to a rather late start as far as watercolor goes, in graduate school. I made a series of watercolors that incorporated most of the major mistakes that amateurs are heir to. My next encounter with watercolor was during one of my irregular brushes with gainful employment. I was teaching Oil painting at a local community college when one of the other instructors went on sabbatical (or at least that is what he said). I was asked if I could teach a watercolor class and lying, said yes. It was there that I discovered that I hadn't even scratched the surface in my attempts to catalogue the missteps that watercolor offers. In desperation I actually read some of the books that were available on how to do watercolors further increasing my knowledge of how to do things wrong. This at least did allow me to talk my way through the semester even if I couldn't actually demonstrate the thing I was droning on about. At the same time I was trying to use an airbrush to do some oil painting. I had got the brush and some paint from a friend in graduate school. The one thing he neglected to add was the instructions. So like the watercolor I was finding things out in the trial and error method. (it seemed more like the error and error method at the time) The airbrush was a perfect glazing tool. When working, it could lay down the lightest most transparent of glazes without a brush mark. It's main problem was that it worked most poorly when not cleaned. And oil paint is a bear to get out of an airbrush. Watercolor on the other hand was very easy to clean out of the brush. And since washes and glazing were the things that I was having the most problem with in watercolor it just seemed a natural to incorporate the two.
     I was talking earlier about the catalogue of things that you can do wrong in a watercolor. I do not expect to live nearly long enough to get through chapter 2. The main problem is that the more you work to get to look right, the more one muddies the water - so to speak. If you have a wash, chances are that it is anemic. So to put more color in it you have to rewet. This causes two problems. First you disturb the underlying wash which will redeposit paint unevenly. Second is that owing to the surface tension of the water it will put more paint at the edge of the pool than in the center, causing rewet lines. If that weren't enough, paper when wet is most vulnerable to surface degradation if you try to move the paint with a brush. When you use a second wash to spread paint, it drives the pigment deeper into the fibers of the paper causing a decrease in the intensity of the color.
     Then there is the problem of mud. Napoleon never had half the problem with mud that I have. Repeated washings of colors, especially complimentary ones tend to take on the perception of a neutral gray or green. To military aficionados this wonderful shade is called OD Green (I think it is short for odious). Lastly there is a time and water limitation on washes. If you have enough water to allow the time to do all the manipulation of a wash you will wind up with a wan wash (this is a technical term). If you have the paint to make the wash strong you won't have the time to manage it. Taken as a whole I wonder why anyone with a functional synapse would take up this particular
form of masochism.
     Wouldn't it be nice to live the carefree life of an oil painter? Never having to worry about anemic washes, rewet lines, and mud with all the time in the world to work on it. Art however presents no problems that an innovative or criminal mind can't overcome.

The secret to solving the problems...
     An airbrush is the one tool that is both complimentary and in sympathetic to watercolor. It's sympathy is that it is primarily a tool for transparency. When an airbrush sprays it makes a pattern of microscopic dots. Much like a photograph, the dots when seen as a whole look like a transparent film. Optically speaking this will be different from the effect that you get with rewash. It will look cleaner because the different paints are not so thoroughly mixed. As a compliment the spray dries almost immediately. This will allow you to put color on a dried wash without disturbing the pristine nature of the underlying wash.
     As for the practical reasons for using an airbrush, there are three; time, alteration and intensity. I consider these the three stooges of watercolor, if they aren't pulling your hair out, they are probably poking you in the eye.
     Let me start with intensity. This has been the "Grinch" who stole color. I have done a million washes that were rich and deep when wet only to see them fade as they dried. An airbrush can add color to a dry wash and as a layering tool bring back most of the intensity of a wet wash. It is interesting that this is the most common thing that a watercolorist does with the airbrush and oddly the easiest. When you need to add color to a broad wash such as the sky the airbrush can do so with out having a lot of sophisticated knowledge of airbrush techniques.
     Alteration of a wash is somewhat more involved but no harder. The airbrush with its capacity for transparency will allow you to lay a film of color on a wash and subtly or radically alter it. When I was in college I was told that you could make shadows by adding complimentary colors. Experience taught me that it was the fastest route to brown. However the layering of a transparent
on a wash coupled with the fact that you don't have to wait till it dries to see the result will let you put a thin glaze of violet on field of yellow. Now imagine what would happen if you took a series of sympathetic colors and layered in such a way that you could get a rainbow.
     Time means nothing to an airbrush. Of course time means nothing to my brother either. In the case of the airbrush you are not constrained by the time that is dictated by the wash. Do a wash now, finish it in a week or so.
     In that odd world called unintended consequences, there is the fallout from the airbrush. One is that the airbrush is stingy with the use of water. This will allow you to paint with thinner papers because the buckling, after your first wash, is minimal. So I find that I choose papers for their beauty rather than for their rewet strength. Another side effect is that the paint tends to stay on the surface of the paper. This will give better color because the pigment is not completely sucked into the fibers. It will also allow greater erasure with subsequent washes because again the paint is on top of the paper not in it.
     The primary enigma of watercolor is serendipity. The best watercolors look as if they just happened that way, a gift of serendipity. I am not usually on serendipity's Christmas list. But Ms. S. is capricious. Sometimes you get a gift that exceeds your expectation and sometimes you get a chunk of coal (painted OD green). The more you try to sweet talk her with manipulation the more she resists. The more you just let it happen that way the more paper you go through. I think of the airbrush as a tool that will take what serendipity gives you and adjusts it a little.

The Modern Airbrush
     There was a time when an airbrush meant a large investment in money and education. This is not so much the case. Because of advances in design the brushes are cheaper and far easier to clean than their predecessors. The Iwata brushes that I use are the best combination of precision and maintainability. I use an Iwata Custom Micron B for the tight detail work and an Iwata Eclipse C with the .5mm adaptation for the background and broad shading.

The airbrush is a compliment to the regular wash of watercolor. As such I am using the paint that I brush with in the airbrush. They do not have to be pre-reduced or separate on the palette. A small amount of water on will thin most paints and a #4 brush will be all that is needed to transfer paint to the airbrush. Since the airbrush is not my primary tool, I pick paints for their brushability and color saturation. I do like the M. Grahm paints for their density and Daniel Smith paints for their broad array of color.

Watercolor technique and the airbrush.
(Some other choices for watercolors little enigmas)

Click on the photos to view a larger version.

1. I usually start out with a drawing done lightly in 5h pencil as I don't like to erase lines. The 5h isn't much good at defining variations in the intensity of color so I just write it in. (Make darker here, Bring home Milk, etc.) I don't do much drawing of the background as I will craft it to fit the central theme.

2. I start off with traditional washes in small areas. This will give me a "watercolor look" that I can use the airbrush to build on.

3A. As an expert on avoiding work, I use as few masks in the body of the flower as possible. The overspray tends to get lost in the over all scheme of things. When I do have need for a sharp line or to put two dissonant colors next to each other I will use a brief mask that only covers the area adjacent to the work.

3B. I use a Custom Micron here because of its low air pressure, It won't lift the mask. I am able to put some more violet in the petal to distinguish it
from its more neutral gray neighbor.

3C. With the mask removed you can see that the petals are distinctive enough to look different yet similar enough to look like they came from the same flower.

4. One of the best uses of the airbrush is to enhance parts of a wash. I am using it here to deepen some of the color in the individual folds of the flower.

5. When some soft edge masking is needed, say to distinguish the front of the petal from the back, I use an Artool stencil, holding it off the surface of the paper so that some paint will blow under it and create a soft edge.

6. When the main body of the flower is complete I put a mask over it. I am going to be doing more inarticulate and darker airbrush work on the background and don't want too much over-spray to fall on the flower.

7. Where I think that the edge should be softer, such as a petal in the rear of the flower, I will pull up the edge of the mask. Some of the background paint will blow under it and leave a soft edge.

8. When I start to do the larger areas of the background I switch to the Iwata Eclipse. I have modified this brush to have a .5 mm nozzle for larger coverage. To bring out the color of the flower I find that it is useful to spray a layer of the compliment adjacent to the flower. So for instance I will spray a violet or magenta against an area that is yellow.

9. As I darken the background with the airbrush I let the foliage suggest itself. It should compliment the flower as the first criteria. One of the compliments is that the background will appear quite out of focus as opposed to the flower which will appear sharp.