Rubbing Alcohol Makes It All Good

Here is a quickie project for you!

*** Protect your work surface! ***

I used three colors of liquid watercolor 

(mine came from Dick Blick,)

mixed media paper and some rubbing alcohol.

First I got the surface of the paper really wet with a mop brush,

then I used a pipette to drop watercolor into the water.

The color started moving around

and I added more drops here and there,

until I got a look I was happy with.

Next I used a paintbrush to flick drops

of rubbing alcohol onto various bodies of color.

The rubbing alcohol pushes the color away -

much like it does when you use blending solution

on alcohol inks.

Then I let the whole mess dry as it was.

And this is how it turned out! I love it! You can see where the rubbing alcohol pushed the color out of the way, leaving behind those white splotchy spaces.
The hope is to eventually draw on this. My eyes are not progressing at the pace I had hoped for. Still praying it happens, but I am not really able to do any detail drawing at this point. At least playing with color is a lot of fun!

One Last Project

I had one last project for this week. Twinkling H2O's. I got a bunch of new colors for my birthday and was just itching to try them out! I started by spritzing some water into the tubs to get the colors primed and ready.

I used an 8" x 10" piece of watercolor paper and wet the entire surface really well. Then I used my twinkling H2O's to lay down various colors with a brush. To get some pops of color, I dropped spots of color in random places. 

As I let the colors start bleeding, I started to see some feathering.

Not as much bleeding and mixing as I wanted, so I sprayed a layer of water across the entire page. This caused the intensity of the colors to soften.

As I let the paper sit for a few minutes, the colors started spreading out more, overlapping, blending and merging. 

To get the color pushing a little more, I spritzed this with some rubbing alcohol. As soon as it hit the colors, I started getting more spread patterns, more color, and more variation.

The alcohol kept the colors spreading and fanning out.

I love the intensity of the colors and the way they bleed together. Starting to pick up a little sparkle in this photo.

More detail of a different area.

And more. That right-hand corner didn't get hit with the rubbing alcohol and those colors blended in a different way.

It was a productive day. This is a shot of some of the supplies I used overall. Add in the twinkling H2O's, sharpies, a couple more tile and it was a good day! Now to decide what to do with all my projects!