What is watercolor red paint made of? How are paints made? What could be better than watercolor

Term Watercolor(French aquarelle, English painting in water colours, Italian aquarelle or aqua-tento, German Wasserfarbengemalde, Aquarellmalerei; from Latin aqua - water) has several meanings.
Firstly, it means painting with special water-soluble (i.e., freely soluble in ordinary water) paints. And in this case, it is customary to talk about the technique of watercolor (ie, a certain process of creativity in the visual arts).
Secondly, it is used, in fact, to directly refer to the water-soluble (watercolor) paints themselves. When dissolved in water, they form a transparent aqueous suspension of fine pigment, which is the basis of the paint, thanks to which it is possible to create a unique effect of lightness, airiness and subtle color transitions.
And, finally, thirdly, it is customary to call the works themselves, made in this technique with watercolors. Their distinctive features are mainly in the transparency of the thinnest paint layer remaining on the paper after the water dries. In this case, white is not used, since their role is played by the white color of the paper, translucent through the paint layer or not painted over at all.

In all the variety of existing paints, watercolor paints are rightfully considered to be one of the most ancient and beloved by artists of various schools and trends.
Scholars know examples of watercolors contemporary to Egyptian papyrus and hieroglyphs. In Byzantine art, church liturgical books were decorated with watercolors. Later it was used for coloring drawings and underpainting on boards. Renaissance masters made sketches for their easel and fresco works in watercolor. Many drawings have survived to this day, shaded with a pencil and then painted with watercolors. Among them are the works of such great artists as Rubens, Raphael, Van Ostade, Lessuer and others.
Due to their relative ease of use and relative availability, watercolor paints are widely used in the visual arts.

Composition of watercolors.
The basis of the composition of watercolors is a finely ground pigment, to which a small amount of various glues of vegetable origin (gum arabic, dextrin, tragacanth, cherry glue, etc.) is added as a binder. Also, the composition in certain proportions also includes honey (or sugar, glycerin), wax, some types of resins (mainly balm resins), due to the addition of which paints acquire hardness, softness, plasticity, and other necessary qualities.
As a rule, watercolor is solid - in the form of tiles placed in special small containers (cuvettes) or soft - in tubes.

Russian manufacturers of watercolors
Of the largest and most famous manufacturers of watercolors in Russia currently existing, two should be singled out. These are the Moscow OJSC "Gamma" and the St. Petersburg ZKH "Nevskaya Palitra". Both enterprises produce high-quality paint, both for professional artists and for amateurs, students, and schoolchildren.
The best quality watercolors among Gamma products can be called the Studio series (available both in cuvettes, 2.5 ml., and in tubes, 9 ml.).
The "Nevskaya Palitra" undoubtedly has the best watercolor series "White Nights" (also available in cuvettes, 2.5 ml. and in tubes, 18 ml.). Personally, I prefer to work with these paints (I mainly use cuvettes), but each artist, of course, has his own tastes and preferences.
In addition to the "White Nights" ZKH "Nevskaya Palitra" produces watercolor series "Sonnet" and "Ladoga", but both are noticeably inferior to the first.

As an example, I will give samples of the full palette (painting) of the Moscow "Studio" and the St. Petersburg "White Nights".
Painted Watercolors by JSC "Gamma" (material taken from the site "Gamma")

Painting of Watercolors ZKH "Nevskaya palitra" (material taken from the site "Nevskaya palitra")

In addition, ZKH "Nevskaya Palitra" also produces a series of paints "Sonnet". Their quality is slightly worse than the aforementioned watercolors, and the palette is not as rich, but they are cheaper.

Foreign manufacturers of watercolors
Many well-known foreign art paint companies in the world produce watercolors. As a rule, each company presents its products in two lines. Usually one of them is expensive, high-quality watercolors made from natural pigments for professional artists. Such a palette contains a large number of colors and shades, and the paints themselves are very durable and lightfast. Another line is for students, students, art lovers. These paints can be made on the basis of synthetic substitutes, their characteristics are close to natural paints, but still inferior to them in quality, which makes them much cheaper and more accessible. They are less durable and lightfast. The palette contains a correspondingly smaller number of colors (shades).

Dutch watercolors
The most famous manufacturer of watercolors in Holland is Old Holland, which dates back to the middle of the 17th century. Her watercolor is represented by the richest palette of 160 colors.

Another, no less famous, watercolor manufacturer is Royal Talens, founded in 1899. Its products on the modern market are represented by two lines:
"Rembrandt" (80 colors palette)

"Van Gogh" (40 colors palette)

English watercolors
One of the famous manufacturers of watercolors in England is Winsor & Newton, founded in 1832 in London. At the moment, her watercolor is represented by two lines:
"Artists Water Color" (96 colors palette)

"Cotman Water Color" (40 colors palette)

Another English watercolor manufacturer is Daler-Rowney. Its products are also represented by two lines:
"Artists" Watercolour" (80 colors palette)

"Aquafine" (37 colors palette)

Italian watercolors
The most famous Italian manufacturer of watercolors is Maimeri. At the moment, her watercolor is represented by two lines:
"Maimeri Blu" (72 colors palette)

"Venezia" (36 colors palette)

French watercolors
The famous French manufacturer "Pebeo", the company was founded in 1919. To date, its product range includes two lines of watercolors:
"Fragonard extra fine watercolor" (36 colors palette)

Nikitina Uliana

Target:

Make watercolors from natural ingredients at home.

Tasks:

1. Study the composition and properties of watercolors.

2. Find out the functional significance of the paint components.

3. Consider the main stages of paint production.

4. Prepare the basis of watercolor paints from vegetable raw materials and

get VEGETABLE PIGMENTS.

Hypothesis:

Working only with plant material, it is possible to obtain watercolors based on natural pigments even at home.

Research methods:

Study and analysis of scientific and popular science literature on the research problem

Experiment: methods for obtaining plant pigments and paints based on them

Processing and analysis of experimental data

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Preview:

Annotation to the work “Watercolor paints. Their composition and production

Target:

Make watercolors from natural ingredients at home.

Tasks:

1. Study the composition and properties of watercolors.

2. Find out the functional significance of the paint components.

3. Consider the main stages of paint production.

4. Prepare the basis of watercolor paints from vegetable raw materials and

get VEGETABLE PIGMENTS.

Hypothesis:

Working only with plant material, it is possible to obtain watercolors based on natural pigments even at home.

Research methods:

Study and analysis of scientific and popular science literature on the research problem

Experiment: methods for obtaining plant pigments and paints based on them

Processing and analysis of experimental data

Introduction.

Watercolor (fr. aquarelle - watery;italian. acquarello) is a painting technique using special watercolor paints.Watercolors are usually applied to paper, which is often pre-moistened with water to achievea special blurred brushstroke.

Watercolor painting came into use later than other types of painting. However, despite its late appearance, in a short time it made such progress that it can compete with oil painting.

Watercolor is one of the poetic types of painting. Watercolor can convey the serene blue of the sky, the lace of clouds, the veil of fog. It allows you to capture the phenomena of nature.

A sheet of white grainy paper, a box of paints, a soft, obedient brush, water in a small vessel - that's all the artist needs. You can write on wet or dry paper immediately, in full color strength. But in any case, it is impossible or almost impossible to fix the damaged place: watercolor does not tolerate the addition or correction of color.

In Russia of the century before last, there were many outstanding watercolorists. P.A. Fedotov, I.N. Kramskoy, N.A. Yaroshenko, V.D. Polenov, I.E. Repin, V.A. Serov, M.A. Vrubel, V.I. Surikov ... each of them made a rich contribution to the Russian watercolor school.

Often, artists use watercolor in combination with other materials: gouache, charcoal.

The purpose of our work is the manufacture of watercolors at home from natural ingredients.

Theoretical part.

Composition and properties of paints.

Watercolor paints are prepared mainly on glues of vegetable origin, which is why they are called water paints. Paints for watercolor painting should have the following qualities.

1.Great transparency.

2. Good to take with a wet brush and easy to blur.

3.Watercolor paint should lie flat on the paper and not form spots or dots.

4. After drying, give a durable, non-cracking layer.

5. Do not penetrate the reverse side of the paper.

The main components of watercolor paint are dye and water. Further, viscous substances are needed, they will prevent the paint from spreading over the paper, making it lie down in an even layer; honey, molasses, glycerin are good for this.

Paint production.

Watercolor paints are available in porcelain cups and tubes. Production technique:

1) mixing with pigment;

2) grinding the mixture;

3) drying;

4) filling cups or tubes with paint;

5) packing.

Features of watercolors.

Watercolor painting is transparent, pure and bright in tone, which is difficult to achieve with oil paints. Watercolor paints are also used in underpainting for oil painting.

Strong dilution of paints with water when thinly applied to paper reduces the amount of paint, and the paint loses its tone and becomes less durable. When applying several layers of watercolor paint to one place, spots appear.

Practical part.

After analyzing the literature, articles on the Internet, you can describe how paints are prepared.

First they look for raw materials. It can be coal, chalk, clay, lapis lazuli, malachite. Raw materials must be cleaned of foreign impurities. The materials must then be ground to a powder.

Coal, chalk and clay can be ground at home, but malachite and lapis lazuli are very hard stones, special tools are needed to grind them. Ancient artists ground the powder in a mortar with a pestle. The resulting powder is the pigment.

Then the pigment must be mixed with a binder. As a binder, you can use: egg, oil, water, glue, honey. The paint must be mixed well so that there are no lumps. The resulting paint can be used for painting.

In old books, the names of exotic dyes are often found: red sandalwood, carmine, sepia, logwood ... Some of these dyes are still used today, but in very small quantities, mainly for the preparation of artistic paints. Still, you can try to prepare paints using mineral substances - pigments, which may be in the school laboratory or in the household.

Hypothesis: I assumed that watercolor paints can be made independently at home, but they will be different from the store ones.

To conduct experiments, I had to get natural pigments and binders.

At my disposal was clay, coal, chalk, onion peel, potassium permanganate, stationery glue, honey and a chicken egg.

I made a plan of 5 experiments.

Plan of the 1st experiment:

1) Clean the coal from impurities.

2) Grind coal into powder.

3) Sift the powder.

4) Mix coal with water.

Plan of the 2nd experiment:

1) Clean the clay from impurities.

2) Grind clay into powder.

3) Sift the powder.

4) Mix clay with stationery glue.

Plan of the 3rd experiment:

1) Clean the chalk from impurities.

2) Grind the chalk into powder.

3) Sift the powder.

4) Mix chalk with egg white.

Plan of the 4th experiment:

1) Make a thick decoction of onion peel.

2) Cool the broth.

3) Mix the decoction with honey.

Plan of the 5th experiment

1) Grind potassium permanganate into a fine powder.

2) Sift the powder.

3) Mix potassium permanganate with water.

During the experiments, I received black, brown, white, beige, yellow paints.

Our paints turned out to be not solid, which are sold in stores. However, artists use similar semi-liquid watercolors in tubes. After experimenting, I wanted to try other raw materials, as well as paint my drawing with new paints.

Experimental results.

Now I know what watercolor paints are made of. You can prepare some paints at home. The resulting paints differ in consistency and quality from store-bought ones.

So, charcoal with water gave the paint a metallic hue, it was easily picked up on a brush and left a bright mark on the paper, quickly drying up.

Clay with glue gave a dirty brown paint, did not mix well with glue, left a greasy mark on paper and dried for a long time.

Chalk with egg white gave white paint, which was easily picked up on a brush, left a thick mark on paper, dried for a long time, but turned out to be the most durable.

A decoction of onion peel with honey gave a yellow paint, it was well drawn on a brush, left an intense mark on paper and dried quickly.

Potassium permanganate with water formed a light brown paint, it was easily picked up on a brush and left a pale mark on paper, quickly drying.

The resulting paints have advantages and disadvantages: environmentally friendly, free, have a natural color, but labor-intensive in production, it is inconvenient to store them, and there are no saturated colors among the resulting solutions.

Conclusion.

Watercolor is one of the most poetic types of painting. It allows you to capture short-term natural phenomena. But she also has access to capital, graphic and pictorial, chamber and monumental works, landscapes and still lifes, portraits and complex compositions.

Conclusions that can be drawn from the work:

1. The history of colors began with the advent of man. They were known long before there were written reports about them. Initially, this painting was mainly found in memory albums and souvenirs, then it entered the albums of artists and appeared in art galleries and art exhibitions.

2. The technique of watercolor painting is very diverse both in its techniques and in the way the paints are used. It differs from other techniques in its consistency, its result. Painted in watercolor in different ways. Some painters prefer to work gradually - one layer of paint is placed on another, dried up. Then the details are carefully handed over. Many take the paint at full strength and write in one layer. It is difficult to accurately show both the shape and color of objects at once.

3. Paints consist of a pigment and a binder. Namely, watercolor paints - from dry dye and glue. They may also contain a certain amount of sugar and, when used, are rubbed with water on saucers, or directly (honey paints) are taken with a brush moistened with water from tiles or cups.

4. In the course of experiments at home, I managed to get watercolor paints of different colors and shades, compare their quality with store-bought paints, and analyze the advantages and disadvantages.

5. If watercolor has a future? We can confidently answer this question. Watercolor has a future!

Without watercolors, the world of artistic painting will be boring and monotonous!

Bibliography:

1. Kukushkin Yu.N. - Chemistry around us - Bustard, 2003

2. Petrov V. - The world of art. Art Association of the 20th century.-M.: Aurora, 2009

Municipal Autonomous Educational Institution "Secondary School No. 107", Perm

Section: natural and mathematical sciences.

Making watercolors at home from natural ingredients.

Student: 6-b

Nikitina Uliana

Teacher:

Watercolor(derived from the Latin word aqua - water) - adhesive water-soluble paints. Painting made with these paints is also called watercolor.

Features of watercolor

Transparency. This is an extremely important feature of these paints. Ways to apply watercolor and excellent results are entirely based on transparency. The reason for everything is the smallest pigment particles, which cannot be seen with the naked eye. This is achieved by the finest grinding of coloring pigments and their even distribution over the surface. The distance between the particles must be sufficient to transmit light to the surface and reflected light. White paper, translucent through a layer of paint, gives the painting an incredible luminosity and brilliance. The quality of watercolor depends on the quality of its components and proportions.

Color palette. The derivative properties of watercolor include changing shades by applying dried layers of paint on top of previous ones. With the outward simplicity of what has been said, it is not at all easy to manage color using layers. The master must have a good idea of ​​​​the result - after all, there will be no opportunity to correct the picture. In watercolor, it is difficult to get by with three primary colors. Therefore, the release of watercolors is always "multi-color" (from 16 colors or more). With mechanical mixing of colors, the properties of watercolors are significantly lost, transparency and purity are reduced. However, it is the transparency of watercolor that allows you to expand the color palette of these paints to unprecedented sizes.

Hue, saturation. By superimposing layers of the same color on top of each other, color saturation is also achieved. Unlike gouache, watercolor is not intended to be applied pasty, as the whole meaning is lost. The properties of watercolor dictate rules to us, the main of which is the use of a large amount of water, because even the name of watercolor comes from the word "water".

Of the negative features of watercolor, one can single out low light fastness - the painting is destroyed under the influence of light, simply speaking, it fades. In addition, due to the large amount of water, the ink film is rather fragile and can be easily destroyed by external physical influences. Ensuring the long-term preservation of such paintings is not a trivial task.

Watercolor composition

• pigments (fine powders),
• binder - gum arabic, dextrin, cherry or sloe gum,
• plasticizer (glycerin or invert sugar),
• surfactant - ox bile - allows you to easily spread the paint on paper, prevents the paint from rolling into drops,
• antiseptic - phenol, protects the paint from mold.

Types of watercolor

• Artistic watercolor (for paintings)
• Design watercolor

Honey cheap paints are widely distributed in stores for schoolchildren. And it is really possible to start acquaintance with watercolor with such paints. After, having felt the watercolor, you can switch to professional formulations. In addition, cheap paints can be used in art and sketches, where the quality of the material does not play such an important role, unlike painting.

Watercolor containers are always small, unlike gouache, since, again, they require more water when used, while gouache can be used without water if the paints are fresh.

They produce watercolor in tubes (semi-liquid watercolor), in plastic tubes (soft watercolor).

For watercolor, special paper is also applicable. Such sheets do not allow the paint to "roll", spreading evenly over the surface, and do not allow "fall through", holding the paint film on the surface. In addition, the density of the paper allows you to keep the shape with a large amount of water. As you know, when wetting and drying sheets of paper are subject to deformation.

Work with watercolors is most often carried out with brushes from the hair of squirrels of large numbers (brushes from number 4), but the refinement of details is done with brushes of lower numbers. A prerequisite for a brush when working with watercolor is the ability to hold a large supply of moisture and have a thin tear-shaped tip. Skilled master artists can produce quality work by one fifth or even seventh number, down to the smallest details.

Store in a dry, well-ventilated room at a temperature not lower than 0 degrees and not higher than 30 degrees, otherwise the quality deteriorates significantly and cannot be restored.

WATERCOLOR AND ITS PROPERTIES (full author's version of the article)

Alexander Denisov, Professor of the Department of Drawing and Painting, Moscow State Technical University. A.N. Kosygin

Quarrel is water paint. But watercolor is also called the technique of painting, and a separate work made with watercolors. The main quality of watercolor is the transparency and softness of the paint layer applied to a white sheet of paper.

The French artist E. Delacroix wrote: “What gives the subtlety and brilliance of painting on white paper, without a doubt, is the transparency that lies in the essence of white paper. The light penetrating the paint applied on a white surface - even in the thickest shadows - creates a shine and a special luminosity of watercolor. The beauty of this painting is also in the softness, the naturalness of the transitions of one color to another, the limitless variety of the finest shades.

However, the apparent simplicity and ease with which a professional artist creates his paintings in watercolor is deceptive. Watercolor painting requires mastery of the brush, the ability to accurately place paint on the surface of the paper - from a wide bold fill to a clear final stroke. This requires knowledge of how watercolor paints behave on different types of paper, what effect they give when applied to each other, what paints can be used to write on wet paper using the “a la prima” technique, and at the same time they will remain the same juicy and saturated. .

Watercolor is a very ancient technique. During the Renaissance, Albrecht Dürer created wonderful watercolors. They still sound very modern, they amaze with freshness, purity, lightness of colors. The heyday of watercolor in Europe falls on the eighteenth century. She attracted the special attention of painters - romantics. The most famous watercolor master in England was W. Turner, who discovered the enormous possibilities of this technique in creating romantic images of nature. He perfected his watercolor technique by working on a wet sheet of paper, which created the effect of a soft transition from one color to another.

In Russia in the first half of the 19th century, the rise of watercolor painting is associated with the name of K. Bryullov. The artist used a variety of techniques: he painted in one layer at once, put paint in two or three layers on the dry surface of the paper, and repeatedly painted details with a thin brush. At the same time, watercolors retained freshness, transparency and airiness.

Beautiful watercolors were created by I. Kramskoy, N. Yaroshenko, V. Polenov, V. Serov, I. Repin, V. Surikov, A. Ivanov. The watercolors of M. Vrubel are very characteristic. They delight with an abundance of the finest color and tone transitions, luminous highlights, and movement. Even the most insignificant objects depicted by the artist are filled with meaning and charm - flowers, stones, shells, waves, clouds ...

In the visual arts, watercolor occupies a special place because it can create both picturesque, and graphic, and decorative works - depending on the tasks that the artist sets for himself. The possibilities of watercolor are wide - its colors are sometimes juicy and ringing, sometimes airy, barely perceptible, sometimes dense and tense.

The watercolorist must have a developed sense of color, know the possibilities of different types of paper and the features of the watercolor paints with which he works.

Now there are a huge number of different companies, both in Russia and abroad, producing watercolors, but not all of them meet the high requirements that artists who work in the technique of watercolor painting place on them. Comparing the advantages and disadvantages of professional and semi-professional paints does not make sense, because. their differences are obvious, and it is difficult to confuse them. Our task is to test modern professional watercolor paints from various world manufacturers and see what capabilities they have and for which specific technique they are suitable.

For testing, we took several sets of watercolors: AQUAFINE (DALER-ROWNEY, England), VENEZIA (MAIMERI, Italy), "STUDIO"(JSC "GAMMA", Moscow), "WHITE NIGHTS" (Factory of artistic paints, St. Petersburg).

For an artist involved in watercolor painting, both the paints themselves and the convenience of using them play an important role. Taking a box of paints DALER-ROWNEY "AQUAFINE", it turned out that it was almost impossible to determine at a glance which colors were in front of us - black, blue, dark red and brown looked like the same dark spot without any significant color differences, and only yellow, ocher, scarlet and light green had their own own color. The rest of the colors had to be determined empirically, trying each color on the palette. And in the future, while working on a watercolor sheet, this significantly interfered and slowed down the creative process. Although the work itself with these paints leaves a pleasant feeling, because. they blend easily and give subtle watercolor transitions. It is also convenient that the paints are easily picked up on a brush and gently lay down on paper.

There is also a significant drawback of these paints - when dried, they lose their tonal saturation quite strongly, and when working on wet paper using the “ala prima” technique, they lose both tonal and color saturation by almost half, and it is possible to achieve contrast painting only on dry paper. , overlapping several layers of previously laid strokes. At the same time, the paints do not give a transparent layer, but lay down like gouache, overlapping the previous color.

Paints of the Italian company MAIMERI "VENEZIA" - soft watercolor in tubes. These paints impress with their external design, impressive 15 ml tubes for watercolors - the aesthetics of supplying good expensive art paints, where everything is thought out and works to ensure that they are chosen when buying. But now we are interested in the most important thing - how convenient they are to work with, and how pigments retain their properties and color characteristics when interacting with watercolor paper.

Already the first strokes showed that the paints are worthy of the attention of artists professionally involved in watercolor painting - a good color palette, juicy blues, reds, transparent yellows, ochers gently interact with each other, creating additional color nuances of watercolor technique. Unfortunately, brown and black pigments, even with repeated application of a smear to a smear, do not gain the desired tonal saturation. Black paint, even with multi-layer prescription, looks like sepia. There is a significant inconvenience when working with these paints - since watercolor in tubes is soft and squeezed onto the palette, then with saturated painting, the pigment is not always evenly drawn onto the brush and also unevenly falls on the surface of the paper. During glazing, when paints are repeatedly applied to the previous dried layers, these shortcomings are not very noticeable, but when working on a damp paper surface using the “ala prima” technique, this greatly interferes and crawls out in uneven clots of the paint layer, which, when dried, destroys the integrity of the put stroke . Soft watercolors are more suitable for classical painting, although with some experience with these paints and in the wet technique, the watercolorist creates magnificent examples of modern painting.

The next paints that we took for the test are a set of watercolors "STUDIO" , produced by OJSC GAMMA. Twenty-four colors - the palette is not inferior to the best samples of foreign professional watercolors. Four types of blue - from classic ultramarine to turquoise, a good selection of yellow, ocher, sienna, red, along with other colors create a rich color scheme.

When working with glazing on a dry surface, the paints give a transparent layer, and when repeated, they gain tone and color well, without clogging the structure of watercolor paper. The pigments mix well and apply evenly on the sheet. In the “ala prima” technique, the paints give a uniform stroke without any problems, gently flowing into each other, creating a mass of the finest watercolor nuances, complementing the already rich color palette. As a long-time watercolor artist, I was somewhat surprised not to find in this set the emerald green paint that is present in all professional sets of the world's watercolor paint manufacturers, and the green one, which was supposed to replace the emerald green, "sounds" more muffled.

Among the shortcomings, one can be noted - some colors, such as blue-green, viridian green, ocher red and neutral black, with a thicker, covering stroke, leave a brilliant mark after drying. In this case, the watercolor binder - an aqueous solution of vegetable glue - gum arabic, comes out, concentrating in dense strokes, it creates a protective layer of pigment, but at the same time, drying unevenly, it remains a shiny spot. This does not contribute to the integral perception of the matte sheet, and in exhibition halls with directional spot lighting, such places begin to glare, preventing the audience from fully seeing the written work. But, knowing the features of specific colors, this disadvantage is easy to avoid. Well mixed paint gives an even covering layer, remaining matte after drying. Otherwise, the paints are superior to many similar world samples.

And the last set that we decided to test is artistic watercolor paints, which are very popular among watercolor artists, produced by the WHITE NIGHTS Artistic Paint Plant of St. Petersburg. Colors familiar from childhood. More than one generation of artists created their works with paints produced by this particular factory. Many watercolorists, going over their sketches painted thirty years ago in the harsh conditions of the Arctic, long journeys across Central Asia, in the extreme conditions of the Arctic, can proudly say that the colors have stood the test of time, they have retained their saturation, juiciness, freshness, such an impression, that the sheets were written quite recently, and after all, a considerable period of time has passed. It was the distant seventies...

Now in front of me is a modern box of watercolor artistic paints "WHITE NIGHTS" released in 2005. The color is easily drawn into the bristle of the brush and just as easily falls on a white sheet of watercolor paper. The color is evenly distributed over the surface in both thick and transparent strokes, after drying it remains matte without losing its saturation. In the “ala prima” technique, on a wet sheet of paper, paints give a lot of the thinnest watercolor transitions, smoothly flowing into each other, but at the same time, thicker drawing strokes retain their shape and saturation. The colorful layer does not clog the structure of the paper, it gives it the opportunity to glow from the inside, and even with repeated copying, it retains its watercolor. Nothing interferes with the creative process when working with these paints.

The next task that we have set for ourselves is to find out the characteristic features of the behavior of watercolors when using common techniques that watercolor artists use when writing their works. During painting, while the watercolor is not yet dry, it can be removed with a hard piece of cardboard, a metal blade or a brush handle, leaving thin light lines and small planes, and after drying, it becomes possible to wash the desired areas almost to a white sheet of paper. It is almost impossible to do this with a brush, so we used a pattern and a sea sponge for our purpose.

After the DALER-ROWNEY "AQUAFINE" paints » strokes lay down on a watercolor sheet - we removed a layer of color from the surface of the paper with a metal blade. Light, almost white lines turned out without difficulty - in the raw form, the paints are easily manageable. When the watercolor layer was dry, we tried to wash it off with a pattern and a sponge. It turned out that it is not possible to wash it to white. The color has penetrated the glued surface of the sheet and has been absorbed into the fiber of the paper pulp. This means that such paints must be painted in one session for sure, without subsequent flush corrections.

The same test, carried out with MAIMERI "VENEZIA" paints, showed that soft paints are not completely removed when scratched with a blade, leaving jammed edges and color underpainting, and when the paint layer is completely dry using a sponge and pattern, the color is washed off selectively, in depending on the density and thickness of the applied smears.

Watercolor paints produced by Russian manufacturers JSC GAMMA "STUDIO" and paints produced by the Plant of Artistic Paints of St. Petersburg "WHITE NIGHTS" can be combined into one group. there are no significant differences in the use of techniques in this test between them.

The semi-moist surface is almost completely removed with a blade, a piece of hard cardboard, a brush handle, from a thin line to a wider surface, and after complete drying along the pattern, you can almost completely wash off the watercolor layer, which of course will not be absolutely white, but close to it. Paints that do not wash off to white include: carmine, kraplak and violet-pink.

▼ "STUDIO" (JSC "GAMMA")

▼ "WHITE NIGHTS" (Factory of artistic paints)