AquaTips - Salt Techniques

This is the another installment of an ongoing feature called AquaTips. Members of the club are encouraged to submit tips and techniques they discovered or use to create and enjoy watercolors. Just send a note to the club with "Tip" in the subject line and we will put it into our AquaTips collection. Come together watercolorists, and share the treasure that is our knowledge!

This is a community AquaTip. DeviantArt members responded to a question with their knowledge and expertise. You can still contribute by responding to the journal, but no more entries will be added to the actual journal.

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Salt is an exciting element for use on watercolor paintings. Many experiment and use it for exciting textures and effects.

Question: What tips and tricks do you use for salt in watercolor paintings?

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defloweredVIRGIN
Salt! It's magical. All you have to do is to sprinkle some salt on wet paint and wait for a minute or too. The result will be dramatic. But you have to make sure that there is enough paint in the water, or the effect will not be very visible. I find that salt work best with backgrouds where you don't want to be bothered with details.

little-sugar-fairy
I used some on my painting " lOve" if you want to see what are the results
little-sugar-fairy.deviantart.…

Lorelei-BRC
I used it a lot lately, and you can have some very nice results with it but it is not always what you would like it to be. You have to be carrefull when you spread the salt, you have to make sure that the paint is wet enought but not too much and that it is saturated enought withh colors. I discovered another use of salt, instead of spreading it on wet paper, I put it before I apply the paint, then paint over with changing (or not) my colors, it gives a nice effect too as if you had an oxyde formation on your paper ( used it for the border of : oxana-lee.deviantart.com/art/B… , oxana-lee.deviantart.com/art/q… , and oxana-lee.deviantart.com/art/R… )

PellucidMind
Salt - one of the best stuff to create textures while paiting with watercolours. Sometimes I use it in huge amounts, sometimes I put just a little on some areas that I want to be lighter. But as other artists have said salt can be tricky Paint must be wet enough, the best results are viewable on intensive colours. My trick to controll a bit the result of using salt: I let it for a moment until the salt crystals strat to melt nicely, then I use hair-dryer to make the crystals melt faster. I think that then the pattern is brighter and more viewable.

abasss
I used it here: abasss.deviantart.com/art/1-in… but I wonder why it looks different to other works made with salt....maybe it wasn't wet enough, but I don't know

witchesrose
the best effect you can get is, to put the salt on the paint when the paint is stil wett but the shine is away. The effect also depents on the kind of paper you use. That is my expirience I like to use different kinds of salt, kitchensalt, seasalt, ...


Rice gives a very nice effect to , ... apply is same as the salt , ...
I hope this has been helpfull
links to some works with salt : witchesrose.deviantart.com/art… , witchesrose.deviantart.com/art… , witchesrose.deviantart.com/art… , witchesrose.deviantart.com/art… , witchesrose.deviantart.com/art…

rinaswan
I agree with PellucidMind
Due to high humidity and temperature in my country, a hair-dryer is very necessary when sprinkling salt in watercolor painting. I've been dumb for years letting salt dry naturally and the effect seemed so disappointing. I have no wonder why most watercolorists in Thailand rarely use salt. Btw, some use sugar instead and it works better in room temperature.

ArtSwitch-Engage
I used salt for the stars in one my pictures found here: artswitch-engage.deviantart.co…

I cut out the ship and put it on later but before I used watercolor for the background and while it was still wet, I put rock salt all over it and then waited for a day and then I scraped it off and it came out like that. It was easy and it had a cool effect I thought too.