Soak-stain portray is a portray method famously utilized in Color Subject portray and Lyrical Abstraction, two forms of Summary Expressionism portray. On this methodology of making use of paint, the diluted paint soaks into the weave of the canvas or paper and turns into a part of it, moderately than sitting on the floor. The main focus of soak-stain portray is on the color. When attempting this system with water-based acrylic paint you can find that the diluted paint beads up on the floor moderately than flowing and marking. You may scrub it with a brush to interrupt the floor rigidity, which can provide an uncontrolled, patchy move. Or you should use a wetting agent, both added to the paint or utilized first to the canvas, which is able to permit the paint to move in a extra managed, even method. We examine two manufacturers of wetting brokers and take a look at some strategies for profitable acrylic soak-stain portray.
Acrylic Soak-Stain Portray
The Early Historical past of Soak-Stain Portray
Helen Frankenthaler was a pioneer of soak-stain portray within the 1940’s. When she created her methodology she used thinned oil paint and poured it throughout a big unprimed cotton canvas on the ground. Later she started utilizing the newly developed acrylic paints, which have been solvent-based. Later she used water-borne acrylics, that are the paint greatest suited to this system as a result of the paint doesn’t trigger the canvas to deteriorate over time like oil and solvents do.
Different Color Subject painters utilizing the soak-stain method included Morris Lewis and Sam Gilliam. Color Subject work are normally giant as a result of the artist desires to fill your sight view with color once you stand in entrance of them. Lyrical Abstraction work will be smaller and should have representational parts, however are nonetheless course of led, with an general sample, and no single centre of curiosity. It may be thought of the second wave of Color Subject portray. You may learn extra about Frankenthaler in our article Recreating the Color Palette of Helen Frankenthaler.
Select the Methodology and Supplies to Get the Outcome You’re After
Soak-stain portray is a mix of fast, quick playfulness, and gradual persistence when you wait to see how the paint seeps over time and the way it adjustments when it dries. It’s normally executed flat on the desk or ground; on unstretched cotton or linen canvas or on heavyweight cotton paper; all unprimed. Paint is thinned with water to the consistency of ink, and even thinner. It may be poured on and left to seep alongside the fibres or tilted to encourage it to maneuver quicker and in a specific path. It may be brushed on and then you definitely wait to see how far it spreads after which drop in or brush on extra paint.
You may work on dry canvas, canvas wetted with simply water, or with a wetting agent. These will every provide you with completely different outcomes. Wetting agent permits a extra managed and smoother move of the color. How moist your canvas is – from drenched to only damp – will make an enormous distinction to the result. You may pre-wash or pre-wet your canvas to pre-shrink it in order that it doesn’t buckle once you paint, after which let it dry earlier than you’re employed on it and that offers completely different outcomes. Your paints will behave in a different way relying on how thinned they’re, in the event that they include a number of pigments or include metallic colourants, or for those who’ve added a wetting agent to the paint. You may paint suddenly or in phases or layers, letting it dry in between. You can also make staining simply a part of the method of a portray. As an example, you can also make a stain portray that emphasises blurriness and mistiness since you need to have an out-of-focus background that means distance in a panorama, then stretch the canvas and paint in a focussed foreground. It will possibly seem like a washy, flowing watercolour or like a saturated, layered, geometric composition. All relying on the alternatives you make of the way you deal with your floor and your paints.
Surfaces for Acrylic Soak-Stain Portray
I examined and painted on three forms of surfaces:
Shrinkage and Cockling
As a result of the paints are thinned with quite a lot of water, the floor will react by cockling as some elements swell and shrink and a few elements don’t. And the general measurement of your canvas will change because the piece of canvas shrinks.
Paper
All paper will cockle when wetted however not like canvas, it is not going to shrink in measurement general. The Jackson’s Eco Paper 200 lb was an ideal paper to work on with this a lot water. It is rather substantial. There’s texture to let the color settle into, which provides curiosity. Mixtures of multiple pigment can separate and create attention-grabbing results within the texture. The paper is heavy sufficient that it virtually doesn’t cockle. Wetting it throughout evenly helps to stop cockling, too. If in case you have lighter-weight paper, you could possibly attempt wetting and stretching as you do for watercolour, however with this paper I didn’t want to try this.
Canvas
If you happen to pour or brush paint on a part of the canvas and depart half unpainted, the moist half will shrink and the canvas will cockle and be very wavy. So there are two issues to think about: learn how to flatten a really wavy canvas (until you need the cockling to be a part of the work) and learn how to account for the canvas measurement turning into smaller.
Canvas completely shrinks when it will get moist. It shrinks extra in a single path than one other. It’s about 10% within the path of the warp threads and 2-5% throughout the grain (referred to as the weft). You may’t actually inform which is which on a reduce piece of canvas until it features a selvedge, which is the sting that’s woven in order that it gained’t fray. The warp is the threads which can be going within the path parallel to the selvedge, the good distance on a 10m roll of canvas.
Shrinkage of canvas upfront or when wetted on the desk must be taken under consideration, particularly if you’ll later be stretching the canvas to a specific set of stretcher bars. A 100 x 100 cm piece of canvas will shrink to 90 x 97 cm, so if you would like your completed unstretched portray to be 100 x 100 cm you’ll want so as to add 10% to the size once you reduce your piece. I used 42 x 30 cm items of canvas for testing, some have been reduce with the 42 cm throughout the roll and a few with the 42 cm alongside the roll. So some shrank to 38 x 29 cm which is a extra sq. form and a few shrank to 27 x 41 cm which made the form much more slender.
Pre-washing the Canvas
I attempted wetting the cotton canvas with chilly water sprayed and brushed on, washing the canvas in a brief, chilly water, rinse cycle within the washer, with and with out detergent, and an extended sizzling water setting. There was no distinction in shrinkage. The canvas shrank the identical from getting chilly water poured on it as getting a sizzling water machine wash. The one distinction was that including detergent eliminated the starch sizing used on the threads within the weaving course of, making it as absorbent as blotting paper and laborious to maneuver any paint round, so I don’t advocate it. The lengthy, sizzling cycle frayed 1 cm of threads alongside all edges. I attempted wetting the linen canvas with chilly water, and gently hand-rinsing it, and it shrank about the identical quantity because the cotton. I attempted stapling down canvas to a board to cease it cockling, however the moist elements nonetheless shrank about the identical as those I didn’t staple, so it nonetheless wrinkled.
One other advantage of pre-washing the canvas, by hand or within the machine, is to wash it. Mud and fibres on the floor will clump or puddle up within the paint or can depart tide marks. You can too clean out fold marks whereas it’s moist, by rubbing it or pulling it out flat on the board you’re engaged on. I attempted ironing it with a steam iron which unexpectedly gave a slight texture just like cold-pressed watercolour paper.
If you happen to haven’t pre-shrunk the canvas, and also you solely paint on some areas of the canvas and it cockles, wait till the paint is absolutely dry, moist the the entire canvas, a sprig bottle is best, and it’ll shrink to match the painted space and be flat once more. It’ll even be 10% shorter within the warp path.
Fraying
The sides of unstretched items of cotton canvas fray a bit. However the weave is tight sufficient that after you pull a number of threads and trim the remainder it’s fairly steady. The looser weave on linen frays extra simply and also you get extra fringe. Linen frays quite a bit even with mild hand washing, so until you sew the sting to stop fraying, it’s greatest to not wash it within the washer.
Stretching your Portray
If you may be stretching your completed canvas onto stretcher bars, chances are you’ll need to depart a border of unpainted canvas the quantity of the thickness of your stretcher bars plus 3-5 cm for pulling round to the again. This fashion you gained’t lose any of your portray as a result of it’s going to all be on the entrance floor. Measure this after wetting and shrinking. There’s a complication: the warp threads that shrank a lot at the moment are stretchy after they weren’t earlier than. When stretching the canvas taut they appear to come back again about half the shrunk distance. The canvas doesn’t keep half shrunk after it has been pulled, however springs again to the brand new shrunken measurement when it’s launched. However chances are you’ll need to take this quantity into consideration when stretching. Listen the primary time you do it and maintain observe of shrinkage and stretch-back for subsequent time.
Can You Stain Paint on a Primed Canvas?
Primed Canvas
As a result of all the very fluid paint stays on high of a primed canvas, it runs in all places actually quick. And if the canvas isn’t utterly degree it might run off the facet. All the colors additionally run collectively and blend in a short time. However after the water has evaporated elements of the skinny areas of paint are very skinny and the weave reveals and it seems a bit like a stain portray. However many of the floor doesn’t. And all that water means the binder is unfold out too far and the little bit of binder that there’s can craze. On the blue, crimson, yellow rectangle work under you’ll be able to see that including wetting agent to the paints does change how they appear even on a primed floor.
On unprimed canvas, the water soaks in. So there may be not a lot operating on the floor. And the color strikes slowly, seeping by capillary motion. It’s a lot simpler to manage. And the pigment sinks into the fibres and adheres with out the necessity for a lot binder.
Absorbent Floor
On a primed canvas, with two coats of absorbent floor on high, the paint runs much less rapidly than a plain primed canvas, so it’s extra controllable. Nevertheless it nonetheless acts extra like a primed canvas. And it seems like a primed canvas within the unpainted areas and also you get the brightness of white shining via the clear colors. Maybe extra coats of absorbent floor would enhance the absorbency.
Getting ready the Paint for Soak-Stain Portray
Diluting the Color
With soak-stain portray, the aim is for the paint to penetrate the canvas or paper fibres like a dye, not sit on high. The looks is soft-focus and matt, not laborious or shiny. For this to occur, you’ll need to make use of acrylic inks or dilute your acrylics to the fluidity of ink. Fluid or smooth physique acrylic turns into very fluid, like ink, with three elements water to at least one half paint. So, mark your jar/bottle into fourths and put ¼ paint and ¾ water and blend properly. Heavy physique turns into very fluid like ink at about 12:1. Inks will be diluted even additional. Helen Frankenthaler is alleged to have added a tablespoon of heavy physique acrylic to a gallon of water (about 4 litres), which could be very skinny!
In case you are utilizing wetting agent, chances are you’ll not want to begin with paint that’s already very fluid like ink. Including diluted wetting agent to already diluted paints makes the paint extra diluted. That is superb if you would like much less pigment for a clear layer or if you would like very fluid paint. However for those who don’t need it too watery you’ll be able to skinny heavy physique paint with simply diluted wetting agent and never first with water. It makes a pleasant viscosity and you’ve got the correct amount of wetting agent in your paint.
I used small squeeze bottles and cups with a pipette for pouring and dropping color onto the wetting agent on the floor, or brushes and a palette with wells for mixing up paints to brush on.
Moist-to-Dry Color Shift
At first I assumed all the colors grew to become lighter as they dried, however generally they dried both just like the moist color or darker, as acrylics normally do. So I now suppose that differing quantities of wetting agent have an effect on the wet-to-dry color shift of acrylic. By pulling the color to the again in a single spot which might maintain it darkish in that spot, or by spreading it out in a lot of little fingers that then dry lighter. So chances are you’ll need to take note of how this works for you once you first attempt it.
White
White acts completely different to all the opposite colors. Mixing in Titanium White or layering it excessive, helps create a smooth focus, dulled background. You may add white on high of a magenta space of moist paint and scrub it into the moist color on the floor to lighten it. However don’t get excited when the white seems nice on it’s personal. When it dries the white will principally disappear. Designs squirted on in white virtually vanish.
Metallic Acrylics
The iridescent steel colors don’t penetrate the fibres just like the pigments do, so that they don’t have the identical look of staining as a result of they sit on high. They should be extra fluid when utilized or they don’t transfer. Excessive Movement consistency isn’t skinny sufficient to move within the metallics, and if used with simply water they’re detachable when dry, they’re everlasting with a wetting agent, in all probability as a result of they penetrate the floor extra.
Binder
Though there’s little binder to carry the paint in place, the color doesn’t run when it’s re-wetted – it’s within the fibres. Acrylic inks/excessive move have the total quantity of acrylic binder as any acrylic paint regardless that they’re very fluid, however water-thinned heavy physique acrylics don’t have the correct proportion of binder anymore. However on unprimed paper and canvas, with the staining method, each the acrylic inks and the closely thinned heavy physique paints, are pretty completely within the fibres.
Drying Instances
In case you are layering colors or portray in phases the place you’re ready for the portray to dry, bear in mind that wetting agent slows down drying. I discover {that a} fan is a useful gizmo. A heater or warmth gun is normally too sizzling and may trigger the acrylic to dry on the floor too rapidly in order that when the remainder of the paint dries the pores and skin cracks or crazes. This slower drying may additionally assist the floor develop into evenly moist, as a result of elements aren’t drying too quickly.
The Wetting Brokers
Though it appears like a ‘wetting agent’ is used to maintain your paints moist on the palette, it’s a chemistry time period used for issues that assist liquids move or penetrate higher, so the floor will get evenly moist. It isn’t to be confused with slowing the drying-out of acrylic paint in your palette. There are methods to try this, however not with a wetting agent. The floor rigidity of water causes a watery wash of acrylic to bead up or pool right into a puddle with a thick edge, so it might roll round on the floor and doesn’t move easily the place you need it to go. Including a wetting agent liquid to both your watery paint or brushing it onto your portray floor first, will break the floor rigidity and your color can move and unfold. Utilizing quite a lot of water in a puddle also can let the color unfold, however all your colors will combine and the puddle will run erratically.
Chemically a wetting agent is a surfactant, which is among the components in washing up liquid and dishwasher rinse assist. However it’s concentrated, you simply want a drop in quite a lot of water and it doesn’t include the undesirable different components of washing up liquid. However in a pinch, you could possibly experiment with including a tiny quantity of washing-up liquid to your acrylic color wash.
Be aware: A wetting agent can be helpful for wetting pigment powders in order that they mix extra simply with water or acrylic binder when making your individual acrylic paints.
Dilution
The 2 manufacturers of wetting agent each come as concentrates with advisable dilutions. They warn that utilizing it much less diluted will outcome within the portray not drying correctly and remaining sticky. The standard methodology is to make up an enormous bottle of diluted wetting agent, label it, and use it solely from that container. Each time I point out including wetting agent I’m all the time speaking about diluted agent. By no means add concentrated wetting agent to your paints or your canvas.
Golden Wetting Assist (previously referred to as Movement Launch)
Dilution: 1:30 which is 33 ml of Wetting Assist in a single litre of water. So the 118 ml bottle of focus makes 3.5 litres.
Liquitex Skilled Movement Assist
Dilution: 1:20 which is 50 ml of Movement Assist in a single litre of water. So a 118 ml bottle of focus makes 2.3 litres.
I anticipated the 2 wetting agent manufacturers to be principally the identical, however they’re actually completely different.
It’s possible you’ll want to make use of extra of the diluted Golden Wetting Assist once you’re wetting your floor to cowl all of it, as a result of it soaks all the best way to the again of the canvas and it soaks so rapidly that it’s laborious to brush out.
The diluted Liquitex Skilled Movement Assist spreads slower than Golden Wetting Assist. This may be a bonus as a result of it may be brushed out earlier than it soaks via. It beads up on the floor and this additionally means it may be brushed and unfold out earlier than it soaks to the again.
At one level I most popular the Golden Wetting Assist for placing on the canvas and the Liquitex Skilled Movement Assist for mixing with paint. However later determined it was the alternative. I attempted a number of completely different strategies of portray, so it’s going to depend upon what you are attempting to realize.
On paper, it was the alternative of on canvas – the Liquitex Skilled Movement Assist was hard-edged and controllable and the Golden Wetting Assist flowed extra and made massive blossoms.
Dried wetting agent on a floor will be re-wetted for the following layer. It doesn’t work to unfold paint when it’s dry on the floor, however will reactivate once you brush on some wwater. I puzzled if, due to this, dried paint would come off the floor when it was wetted once more, but it surely doesn’t. I moist it and scrubbed it and the paint was set.
Coating the Canvas With a Wetting Agent vs. Simply Water
It takes time for water to penetrate the canvas and moist it totally – it soaks in ultimately after about an hour for those who maintain re-wetting it. The Liquitex beads up even on water-soaked canvas. So it must be brushed out, however that works superb. Golden doesn’t bead up, it soaks in immediately the place you set it and is difficult to maneuver with the comb. So it might depart the form of your unique line or dot of software, that you simply generally can’t do away with. It’s laborious to get the Golden to unfold until the canvas is already moist, so you find yourself utilizing quite a bit to get the entire space lined. And also you get completely different outcomes once you use completely different quantities.
If you happen to work water into the canvas, after which apply the wetting agent it helps the wetting agent unfold extra simply and canopy farther, but it surely additionally dilutes it extra. So it’s solely a bit of completely different from simply utilizing plain water. If utilizing water solely on the floor, and also you need to management the unfold, let it soak in, pour off the surplus, and work on it damp however not drippy. It additionally is determined by what impact you are attempting to realize.
Making use of Paint on Wetted Canvas: The Distinction Between Simply Water, and the Two Wetting Brokers
Paint utilized on canvas wetted with Liquitex flows additional than Golden. With Golden, the sides soften however the color sinks in so it doesn’t unfold as a lot, so there’s quite a lot of color on the again of the canvas. The color spreads slowly but when there was sufficient Golden utilized it was fairly far after an hour. As a result of Golden sucks paint to the again, you’ll find that you simply maintain including extra paint and because it sinks in you retain including extra paint and it retains being drawn in. Then you definitely discover that each one the paint is on the desk behind your canvas. It’s possible you’ll need to as a substitute let it dry and re-wet it and proceed later.
On simply water-wetted canvas, paint spreads immediately and probably the most, generally with lengthy, feathery fingers, and may unfold all the best way to the sting of the wetted space. It stays extra on high of the canvas, so the color is stronger. Except you actually saturate it with paint, none soaks via to the again.
I discover the again extra attention-grabbing generally than the entrance. Typically this is perhaps as a result of the whites have all soaked via to the again. Whites sink via when a wetting agent is added to the paint identical to it does when white is painted on high of wetting agent.
When the board with the canvas was left tilted at a 45-degree angle, the paint on the Liquitex wetting agent unfold out. On water, it unfold down. On the Golden it barely unfold. The Golden normally pulls the color in, to the again of the canvas, so it retains a painted form higher and doesn’t unfold out as a lot.
On Linen
Water doesn’t bead up on linen prefer it does on cotton. However a wetting agent can nonetheless be helpful for controlling the unfold of the color and making the sides of the move smoother. The weave is so unfastened that it helps for it to be on a water-resistant board, as a result of a lot of the paint goes via the unfastened weave onto the board.
Wetting Brokers On Paper
Floor remedies left to proper:
1. Golden Wetting Assist
2. Liquitex Movement Assist
3. Water
4. The unique 5 colors and shapes on dry paper. Be aware that the brown has run into the yellow and principally hidden it.
5. Water left to dry a bit so not drenched.
6. Utilizing a moist brush to stroke the marks on dry paper.
The Soak-Stain Portray Course of
With a wetting agent on the floor, the utilized paint spreads however not in a puddle. With water, there’s a puddle on the floor that strikes simply. So the colors combine extra and also you have to be cautious that it doesn’t all roll off/pour off on one facet, so you will need to maintain it degree.
If utilizing simply water, soak the entire canvas and wait. Brush the water onto the floor and get it evenly moist. Look forward to it to soak up. It’s laborious to get an evenly moist floor with simply water, until it’s dripping moist, which isn’t helpful for many sorts of soak-stain portray. So it helps to have no less than some wetting agent on the floor.
It really works properly to moist your complete piece, let it shrink (which occurs immediately), and clean it flat. Then in case you are engaged on moist canvas, begin working immediately. You may add the diluted wetting agent, if you may be utilizing it, to the damp canvas because the water helps it unfold extra evenly (particularly with the Golden). You can too determine how a lot wetting agent you need to use on the floor – completely different quantities will trigger the paint to move in a different way. Or you’ll be able to let the canvas dry flat and add the wetting agent later so you’ll be able to management the place it’s, if you would like it simply in sure shapes.
You may add your color utilizing a dropper, by pouring from a cup or by brushing paint from a palette. In the course of the portray course of, you’ll be able to add drops of diluted wetting agent that can disperse the paint.
If you may be engaged on dry canvas, then nonetheless moist the canvas and flatten it out however depart it to dry.
In case your colors are a combination of pigments, both within the tube/bottle or since you’ve combined a color your self, the lighter-weight one might rise and float and your color will look completely different because it dries. Color that you simply drop on might depart a hint of the unique strains or drops, even for those who brush it out immediately.
Relying on what you are attempting to realize – floating color that separates, flowing stains, soaking, attention-grabbing lacey edges and borders, puddles and runs mixing colors, a distinction between moist and dry utilized areas, and extra – it’s your decision painted-on strokes that keep principally unchanged or a flowing mixing sample.
An attention-grabbing factor I observed: putting objects on the moist paint and leaving them, leaves an imprint, like a hoop from the underside of an ink jar.
Listed below are 3 ways to realize completely different outcomes. Different mixtures of moist or dry floor; wetting agent on the floor, within the paint or added as you go; and quite a lot of strategies of making use of the paint, will provide you with quite a lot of outcomes.
A Flowing Soak-Stain Portray Approach
1. Gently wash the canvas with chilly water by hand or machine with out cleaning soap. Unfold the moist canvas out completely flat on a horizontal floor. Or totally moist the canvas and scrub the floor with a stiff brush or scrub brush and let it sit on a flat floor till it turns darker yellow, displaying that it’s absolutely wetted.
2. Put together all acrylics by diluting with water to the consistency of ink, or simply use acrylic inks. You may have your colors in a palette with wells, or jars, or cups, or squeeze bottles.
3. Put together a dilution of a wetting assist.
4. Add extra water to the floor once you’re prepared to begin. Utilizing a sprig bottle makes it simpler.
5. Pour on the color and tilt. Add a number of drops of diluted wetting agent if the color will not be flowing easily. Use brushes, tilting, or spraying water to maneuver the color round. Add extra color as wanted.
6. Let dry and assess if it is advisable moist the floor once more and do extra portray.
A Soak-Stain Portray Approach With Separate Shapes
1. Similar as above however let the flat canvas dry utterly, to work on it the following day.
2. Put together your acrylics by thinning them with a diluted wetting agent.
3. Paint your shapes on the dry canvas and observe how they’re flowing. Add extra shapes and hues, being attentive to any that you simply don’t need to move collectively.
4. Cease when your shapes are mixing an excessive amount of. Let it dry and proceed. You may overlap clear colors to create visible mixes, if the primary color is dry.
A Mixture Flowing and Separate Shapes Soak-Stain Portray Approach
1. Gently wash the canvas with chilly water by hand or machine with out cleaning soap. Unfold the moist canvas out completely flat on a horizontal floor to dry till the following day. Put together a dilution of a wetting assist. Then totally soak the canvas with diluted wetting agent, as evenly as you’ll be able to.
2. Put together your acrylics by thinning them with the diluted wetting agent.
3. Paint in your color and wait to see the way it flows. Colors might combine.
4.Let dry and assess if it is advisable moist the floor once more and do extra portray.
Further Reading
How to Stretch Canvas: a Visual Guide
Golden SoFlat Matt Acrylic for Hard Edge Abstract Painting
Artist Review of Jackson’s Museum Stretched Canvas
Acrylic Painting, Microplastics and the Environment
Shop Acrylic Painting on jacksonsart.com