Beginner Level

Part 6-Beginner Watercolor Exercises: Splatters and Textures

Adding splatters and textures to your painting is a fun way to spice things up!

Part 6 of Beginner Watercolor Exercises from Audrey Ra Design: Splatters and Textures

I also have a FREE online course, Watercolor Basics for the Absolute Beginner, if you want to learn more!

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Splatter

I love adding splatter to my paintings because it adds a bit of whimsy and character. Like these crystal paintings look more interesting with splatter.

And for these snowscapes, I splattered a white opaque medium to represent snow.

There are a few ways you can add splatter. You can use an old toothbrush and simply run your finger along the bristles. This method will create a very fine splatter with lots of tiny droplets.

Or you can use a loaded brush and flick or tap it against your finger or another brush. This method will create splatter of different sizes and value depending on how far you are from the paper, how watery your paint is, etc.

Lastly, you can use a straw to create a different kind of splatter like blotches. With this, you can either create a very wet painted area and blow, or as you’re painting and you find very wet areas you can blow the beaded paint in different directions. A quick exhale is all it takes to force the paint in a direction.

Try all of these methods to discover for yourself what you like.

Textures

Salt & Watercolor

If you’re a fan of texture in your paintings, you’ve gotta try salt! When you add salt to a damp area, it essentially soaks up the water and pushes the pigment away, creating a unique effect. Different salt will give you different results, which I can explore in a later post.

But for now, I just have coarse salt. And I like to add my salt almost right away as I’m painting. If I want it in a concentrated area, I’ll be careful where I drop the salt. If I want to cover a larger area, I’ll sprinkle it from high above my paper so that the salt falls more naturally, randomly, and evenly.

Once the paint has dried, you can gently rub off the salt. Or leave it in for even more 3D texture!

Rubbing Alcohol

Let’s try the rubbing alcohol technique. Paint a wet blue (any color works, too!) area. And while it’s still wet, drop in some alcohol. You can use a pipette, but for the video I just used my finger.

Observe how it pulls in and repels the pigments simultaneously.

I personally have never used rubbing alcohol in my paintings, but it’s still a cool texture effect to try!

Plastic

You can use any type of plastic for this demonstration. I’m using saran wrap, but you can use a plastic bag, ziploc bag, anything!

I’m starting with the same wet blue painted area. And before it fully dries, I squished the plastic onto the paper. I didn’t move the plastic around.

What’s going to happen is that the paint is going to dry around the areas where the plastic was pushed in. This will create some dark, random lines.

Watch the video on Splatters and Textures

Thanks so much for reading this post on how to add watercolor splatters and textures! I hope you learned something new. Remember to have fun with these techniques. Half the fun with watercolor is literally going with the flow and observing what happens. Happy accidents are most welcome here, and I hope it helps you fall in love with watercolor more and more.

There are more parts to this series, so stay tuned! I’d love to hear from you. Please leave a comment down below and share about your experience with these techniques.

If you try out these exercises, please tag me on social media @AudreyRaDesign and use the hashtag #PaintWithAudrey.

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