Boat On River Lesson 2

Now the drawing has been traced onto my Arches 140 pound paper. I want to preserve some whites in this piece to make the water appear to sparkle, and I know I will be working with big wet washes due to the amount of water and sky in this piece. Therefore, I have masked some of the finer detail areas. I use Winsor Newton Yellow tinted masking fluid and a nice, little brush coated with soapy water.

Never mix your masking tools with your regular painting tools. Use separate water, paper towels, etc. Masking will ruin your good brushes, so keep them totally apart.

I use a very cheap little brush for masking. I coat it with thick, soapy water, then use just a little masking at a time. I keep dipping into the thick, soapy mixture in between applications of masking to preserve the brush as much as possible. If an area to be masked is extremely small, I sometimes use a toothpick to apply the masking.
Don’t use a hot hair dryer on your masking as this will “bake” the masking into your watercolor paper and make it difficult to remove.

If you would like to paint along with this lesson, go to my etsy online shop and click on the Online Class icon. For $5.00 I will send you the reference photos and the prepared drawing in a pdf file format via email. Then, you can paint along each day as I describe with photos and journaling, how to paint this little picture.