Water color binfer how to#

Ox gall increases the wetting properties and flow of watercolors with a few drops to your painting water. Something to be aware of if you use gum arabic your paint will lift off the paper more easily,so if you plan to use several layers of colors over other colors don’t use gum arabic. Then you just use your water the same as you would if it didn’t have gum arabic. I also will sometimes use Gum arabic in my main painting water. At the very least use a small water resevoir with 8 oz water about 20 drops of Gum arabic. Never use gum arabic straight out of the bottle. Gum Arabic also helps slow down the drying time of paint giving you more time to work with you washes.

As a medium gum arabic increases the gloss and transparency of watercolors. It has the consistency of honey or light corn syrup it is used as a binder for watercolor paints. Most watercolors contain a portion of gum arabic.

Water color binfer how to#

Let’s move on to watercolor mediums what they are for and how to use them. So in watercolor painting tap water is just fine. In fact distilled water didn’t perform as well as tap water. The verdict is there is no difference between tap water and distilled water. I also used distilled water in several watercolor painting techniques including gradient washes, flat washes,wet in wet, and wet into semi-wet and so forth.

That not withstanding I experimented using distilled water on different papers hot pressed, cold pressed, and rough watercolor paper. First off distilled water is slightly more acidic than tap water the higher ph could potentially be detrimental to your watercolor paper. I finally broke down to experiment with the possibilities of using distilled water. I have continued to hear it over the 20 or so years since then. I have heard the rumors that using distilled water is superior to using tap water since I began watercolor painting back in high school. Let’s start with using distilled water to thin your paints. Three of the most misunderstood subjects is using watercolor mediums and the use of distilled water vs. So with watercolor painting for some reason there is a lot of misinformation out there and other information that is completely lacking.