Friday 14th March 2025
There was a good turn out of members to attended the salt in watercolour demonstration given by Janet Wilson, a longtime member of FCSA. She is also know locally as she gives art classes for the U3A. She kindly volunteered to give one of our member’s demonstrations to show people how she has used salt with watercolour to get an interesting effect.
Janet had brought in several examples of how she has used the technique in the past. She finds that it works particularly well when depicting trees, as can be seen from the images below.
Here are some examples that were sent to the membership before the demonstration.
Janet said that it was important to start with a dry sheet of watercolour paper. Janet was using Bockingford 300 gsm. She was going to only use two colours. Blue and brown which when mixed produces a kind of grey. It is a very good idea to make a generous puddle of the paint colour that is going to be applied remembering that as the paint dries or is taken up by the salt it will become much lighter in colour.
At this point it is time to sprinkle in the salt before the paint starts to dry. Janet used both table salt and dishwasher salt.
Usually it would be a question of walking away and leaving the salt to do its work. Only when it is completely dry should the salt be brushed away so that the pattern that has been achieved can be used as the basis of a painting. In order to avoid waiting Janet had brought a number of hairdryers for people to use. Below is the resultant effect that she had achieved.
At this point Janet began to paint her woodland scene using the same colours as before but applying the paint with a paint brush and using a rigger brush to paint the fine branches of the trees. She was able to lift an area of the paint to produce the pathway.
Everyone was encouraged to go and try the technique out for themselves. There was spare paper and watercolours for anyone who did not have their own. Here are some examples of the what was being produced at different stages of the evening.
The idea of asking members to give a demonstration of an aspect of art that they enjoy using has been enthusiastically taken up both by the different people who have offered to demonstrate but also by the members themselves. On this occasion our thanks go to Janet Wilson for volunteering and giving us another successful member’s demonstration.