Fauvism
Tempra Resist Technique
Setup and Tempra Painting Steps
- Tape down watercolor paper onto a drawing board.
- Add a still life CONTOUR drawing onto the paper with pencil. NO VALUE.
- Decide which areas in the painting you want to protect from the ink (tempera is the resist). These are the areas you will want to paint with watercolor.
- Pour out a bit of Tempera into a lid or small container and start to paint with tempera leaving the drawn lines untouched.
- When using a THIN LAYER OF TEMPRA some of the ink will seep through to the paper below and give you a slight toned area.
- Using a thicker layer of tempera gives the paper a whiter cleaner look and the ink resists that area.
- These are the areas you want to keep clean for the watercolor painting technique.
- LET DRY COMPLETELY
Adding the India Ink
- Use a flat larger brush.
- With as few slightly overlapping strokes as possible, cover the entire sheet quickly.
- Do not disturb the tempera paint underneath.
- Fill the brush with A LOT of ink.
- Begin at the top of paper with light, quick sweeps of the ink across the paper and overlap it just a bit for each stroke.
- With each stroke refill the brush with ink otherwise you may get streaks.
- Should you get streaks, quickly touch them up carefully.
- Continue until the painting is completely covered and then set aside to dry.
- The India ink will sink into the paper where there is no tempera layer to protect it.
- LET DRY COMPLETELY
REMOVING THE TEMPRA
- Once ink is completely bone dry bring painting to the sink and gently, run WARM tap water in the sink and lightly rub off the TEMPRA with your fingers.
- The tempera will dissolve, leaving the ink outlines intact.
- You may need to rub off more before blotting it on a towel.
- Lift paper from sink every now and then to allow dirty water to run off the paper.
If you have streaks it is either due to
- tempera was too watery
- didn't apply enough tempera
- when applying ink you overlapped each stroke too much/not enough
- ink thickened in the bottle and was not diluted enough
Once dry you are ready to use watercolors to finish the painting.