Woolies

"Woolies"

Prismacolor colored pencil on watercolor beach wash on 140 lb watercolor paper 11" x 15". This recently won 3rd place at the 2013 State Fair in the professional class, drawing category. I learned about beach washes from Kate Lagaly. She has a fabulous tutorial here.

Since I am 4 hours away from the beach, I decided to try this in my backyard. I used a plastic tub with a solution of kosher salt and water. 8 tablespoons of salt per 1 gallon of water is a good approximation of sea water. I had some play sand laying around so I grabbed a handful or 2 of that and I had mixed up some old watercolors that had hardened in their tubes (cutting the tubes open to get the dried watercolor out). I don't recall how much water I mixed into the jars of paint, but I made sure it was watery enough to pour and not transparent. Then I took 3 - 11" x 15" sheets of watercolor paper out to my table with my pan of "ocean" water on it. I submerged 1 sheet and threw some sand on top and lifted it out of the water. I tilted it in different directions to let the water run through the sand to create the interesting organic shapes. When I thought it looked good, I laid it out on a sheet of plastic (I used an old shower curtain) in my shed. After I finished with the other 2 sheets of paper in salt and sandy water, I poured my different colors of paint. I then let them dry for a few hours. When they were totally dry I shook as much sand off as I could then brushed the rest off with a big brush.

The backs of the beach washes turn out nice too.