I have read this chapter while I was still working on project 2 (Laying washes), because I was curious what exactly was meant by the term. I found it very interesting and was looking forward to experimenting and trying out the exercises!

The principle of using a resist to protect areas of the paper from being coloured made me remember another technique which I had been introduced to as a child: Wax batik.

I really enjoyed this project and would have liked to continue with experimentation.

 

Wax

The task was to first use the resist directly on the paper, then use it on coloured background for three motives:  An object with a simple shape, a pattern or texture, and lines. I used quite rough paper in a 30×30 format, and transparent candle wax from a household candle which was quite difficult to see on the paper. It was helpful to sketch the shapes with a pencil and to look at the paper at an angle to the light, then one could detect the wax traces. I especially liked the effects of applying wax in different intensities, which resulted in different degrees  of protection for the underground colour. The exercise also gave some practice with controlling colour intensities, i.e. how much pigment is needed to achieve a certain intensity with the colour.

 

I repeated the exercise with oil pastels. These also works as a resist against watercolour, but the effect is quite different because oil pastels are opaque, not transparent like the wax. So rather than letting the background colour shine through, the resist areas will appear in the chosen oil pastel colour.

 

Masking fluid

I chose white rubber liquid for this task and decided to incorporate both effects of resist on white and resist on coloured background in each experiment. The first about plain areas is a small still life with mug and pitcher. The second is a pattern inspired by the idea of a meadow, and the third about lines was inspired by cobwebs.

I like working with masking fluid. It is a bit difficult to see on a white background, but a pencil sketch and looking at an angle to the light does help. It is transparent and protects the background colour. Interesting effects can be created when the brush becomes a bit dry and the resist contours become broken, as in the pattern experiment. For the fine lines of the cobwebs I used a dispensing bottle with a fine tip, which works well but needs some practice because the amount of liquid pouring out is not always easy to control. I’m not sure whether the line experiment would have worked with a fine brush.

  

  

Gouache and Gum Arabic

Finally I experimented with gouache and gum arabic as resists. For the gouache, I used white colour and applied it with a brush. I created linear patterns inspired by Madras cloth with its light colours and woven transparency effects. The first gouache experiment was done with a single washing off which revealed the final pattern. The difference between the final painting and the painting before washing off was quite striking!

  

Then I tried out gum arabic. While I found the process quite interesting and liked the painting before washing off, I found the final work disappointing, because there was almost no colour left on the sheet. I don’t know what went wrong. Maybe it’s a problem that gum arabic is the medium with which watercolour is kept on the paper and so the resist is washed off to the same degree as any watercolour pigment. If I were to use gum arabic as a resist in the future, I would certainly do some research how it can be applied more successfully. Or maybe my pattern was just too complicated and the gum arabic resist would have worked better with simpler shapes.

  

 

I did another gouache resist experiment, because in the first I had lost the blue colour due to transparency effects with yellow. I wanted to try out an intermediate wash off and preserve both yellow and blue tones, in adddition to mixed colours from transparency effects. I like the result and think the gouache technique works quite well. But maybe if I want to obtain clean transparency effect without washing out, it might be more effective to use rubber liquid for these Madras patterns.

The images show the stages of this painting: (1) before the first washing off; (2) after the first washing off; (3) before the second washing off; and (4) final as after the second washing off.