Adding texture to watercolor can be done in many ways, but one of my favorite ways is to use salt. This watercolor technique involves simply sprinkling salt onto your watercolor painting to create unique blooms.
What Happens When You Put Salt On Watercolor?
When you sprinkle salt on a wet watercolor painting, it will create little blooms as it pulls the color off the paper. This creates a really cool effect that you can use to your advantage when painting.
In this blog post, I go over how to use salt in your watercolor paintings and other tips and tricks on how this simple household ingredient can elevate your paintings to new heights.
Check Out:
Using Oil Pastels On Watercolor Paper
How To Use Salt & Watercolor
What Kind Of Salt Do You Use For Watercolors?
You can use a variety of different salts for the watercolor salt technique. Your best bet here is to experiment and see what works best for your style. In this tutorial, I am using coarse table salt.
Materials Needed:
- Watercolor paper
- Watercolor paints
- Brushes
- Water
- Salt of choice
Step 1: Paint Your Base Layer
Start by applying a wash or base layer of watercolor onto your paper. This layer could be the background or a small part of your painting.
The paper doesn’t have to be soaked, but you do need to have enough water down for this technique. I show examples of this further down in the post.
Step 2: Sprinkle Salt
While the paint is still wet, sprinkle a pinch of salt over the painted area. Experiment with different amounts of salt to achieve varying textures.
Step 3: Observe and Experiment
As the salt reacts with the watercolor, observe the fascinating effects it produces.
Every single time you use salt in a watercolor painting it will create a different result! It’s so fun to watch and test out different variations.
Make sure to allow the painting to dry completely before brushing off the salt.
Step 4: Layering and Detailing
Once the initial layer has dried or you have other areas of your painting to work on, you can continue to build layers and add details to your painting.
When the salt is sprinkled, you typically want to leave it alone to do its thing. There have been times where I’ve painted, sprinkled salt, and then added some more paint around the salt and got some really cool effects. You don’t know until you try! 🙂
Salt Watercolor Tips
As I mentioned, practice is key when experimenting with salt and watercolor.
Create a practice sheet and label each section with notes for future reference. See my example below!
The image above shows how salt reacts to a lot of water, very wet, and what I consider a “normal” amount for painting. If you use a very small amount of water, more than likely the salt effect will be very minimal or not noticeable at all. So using water is really key in this technique.
Some colors also react better with salt. Before you start painting, do a test sheet to see how the different colors and washes react with your salt.
The biggest factors that affect how salt reacts to your watercolor painting are:
- Type Of Salt Used (the larger the salt the larger the blooms)
- Tube Of Color (different colors may react better or worse)
- Watercolor Paper (some papers hold up better and produce better results)
- Amount Of Water (the more water the bigger the blooms)
- Amount Of Paint
- Amount Of Salt
With all those factors, it really is possible to create a million in one different variations with salt and watercolor. The amount of water used and watercolor paper are most important to me when using this technique. I like to use a higher quality paper like Arches and a lot of water.
Arches Paper always has the best results for me when painting, but I do use cheaper watercolor paper often to save money.
This is a mixed-media painting where I used salt to create a unique background. I did a watercolor wash, threw some salt down, and added a bit more paint around it. I love how this one turned out!
Another example of using salt in a painting could be in a small section of the painting for interest. It doesn’t always have to be used for the background, but it’s one of my favorite ways to use the technique.
Conclusion
Using salt with watercolor is an experimental technique that adds an element of surprise to your artwork. I love adding texture to my paintings and using salt is a great way to do that.
It’s fun that this technique is unpredictable because you never truly know how it is going to turn out. If you work with watercolor, you know this medium can have a mind of its own!
Thanks for reading! Let me know in the comment section below if you have any questions or experiences with this technique.
If you want to see more of my artwork, check out my online shop here. 🙂
-Amanda
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