The "Love" Part of a Perfect Love/Hate Relationship: Me and Aquabord

I Admit at times this all look like slow motion (to all the incredible fast painters out there who makes me feel like a snail...), but, a love relationship just cannot be rushed, especially when it's facing some significant difficulties... Ok, ok, before your thoughts go astray, I am actually talking about this new surface I have been continuously trying (and tucking away out of frustration) for about a year -- the Ampersand Aquabord. And I think I am finally making real progress in understanding how it works...

You see, the problem of painting on Aquabord mostly come from the fact that it seems to have a will of its own -- washes laid down on it does not seem to go to places you want them to go, smooth washes are next to impossible for large areas, surface dries in a heartbeat and wet-in-wet applications almost always fail -- despite all of which, once you have tried it, it's hard to put down: colors do not sink into the surface and the brilliance of hue you can achieve on this surface is almost unsurpassed as far as watercolors go. Just like a perfect lover, it's wild, hard to tame, but your heart always goes back to it after every painful fight and every separation.

Remembering June,  Watercolor on Ampersand Aquaboard, 6"h x 6"w, WIP 2

Like any other love affairs, it only start to become better and the two parties involved have "broken in" with each other. After much trial and frustration, the beauty of handling quality of this difficult surface start to reveal itself little by little:

-- Glazes of color merge seamlessly without revealing where the rewetting starts and where it ends. On paper, when applying a glaze to an area, despite out best effort to fade color back to clear water on the edge of shapes that requires a soft transition, often than not a "watermark" show up at the edge of the area that has been wet if the glaze is applied on areas that already have heavy pigment applications on them. This is because water would almost always loosen the pigment lying underneath and redeposit them on the edge of the wet area, no matter how light your touch is. I've tried soft squirrel hair brush, it helps but still does not totally eliminate the problem. On this surface, though, the surface texture of clay seem to break the obvious "ring" appearance of the rewetted areas, and glazes merge without a trace into existing color passages if you apply them lightly and avoid to disturb the existing pigments too much.

April's Passing,  Watercolor on Ampersand Aquaboard, 6"h x 6"w, WIP 2

-- Delicate layering of colors truly "GLOWS" on this surface. If I apply washes that are so faint only a trace of color can be detected when applied directly on white paper, the color seem to stand out with more integrity and shows up more. So, if you are patient, the colors on this surface can almost be infinitely modified by applying a very thin, watery glaze over any existing passages, like the shadow areas on the petal in the details shown below -- the Cobalt Blue glaze I applied would totally disappear had I try to do this glaze on paper, but here, a very lovely subtle purple tinge shows clearly on the glazed areas.

-- Lifting from very dark to near white can be easily done with a synthetic brush, while lifting from pale passages would result a pearl-like glowing stain that hints the original color. The lovely surface texture also gets emphasized and adds surface interest with these near-white liftings and thin glazes, as shown in the lifted white shapes in the detail below.

Details of April's Passing,  Watercolor on Ampersand Aquaboard, 6"h x 6"w, WIP 2

-- Very interesting diffused edges where a dark area meets a light area can be achieved by laying the dark pigment thickly (almost like cream or paste consistency), then immediately teasing out the edge with a wet (not just damp) brush. I used a small (size 4) brush with synthetic hair to do this, laying water droplets next to juicy dark passages, then push and pull color with the brush and water on surface, lifting if necessary, to create all the interesting shadow shapes on the leaves shown in the detail below. Since lifting back from near black to near white is not hard on this surface, once I let go of the fear and allow water to push and pull pigments with its own will to areas I have not expected, some very interesting edge effects and texture appears miraculously...

Details of April's Passing,  Watercolor on Ampersand Aquaboard, 6"h x 6"w, WIP 2

In the end, what did I learn from this very difficult yet extremely rewarding relationship? I discovered that once you stop the dire effort of trying to control every aspect of it -- making every shape, every edge, every color passage to go exactly as you imagined -- and let go a little bit to observe what happens on surface as you lay down the colors, half in panic (always), half in expectation, beautiful surprises lies in every corner. A partner with character may be hard to handle, but never will there be a dull moment or boredom in the relationship that comes along...

Special Report: Painting on Aquaboard

In the past few months I've had my continued efforts with Ampersand Aquabord -- and continued to fail in terms of getting consistent, acceptable quality results. After working and reworking each image for an extended period of time, I was able to make the final results look somewhat pleasant to the eye, but it was extremely time-consuming and frustrating to me as far as the overall experience goes, and here's why:

1. The surface does not stay wet long enough no matter how many times you wet it -- not wet enough to achieve all the splendid wet-in-wet movement of pigments that I love so much and try to achieve in every paintings I create. If I wet it too much that water pools on the surface, the pigments just float on pools of water and make a big mess; but as soon as I drain excessive water off, the surface just becomes damp and pigments do not flow like they would do on wet paper;

2. Difficulty in achieve an even wash or gradation -- with each brush stroke the pigments would tend to accumulate where the stroke ends, and again, the surface dries so quickly that seamless application of washes from one stroke to the next just seems impossible;

3. Difficulty in controlling edge quality -- since the surface do not stay wet long enough, it seems very difficulty to soften edges between shapes, as newly laid-down washes seem to dry almost immediately, leaving very little time for edge manipulation with a damp brush.

But the brilliance of color and interesting granulation textures you can achieve on this surface, and the possibility of framing it varnished, without mat or glazing, directly in a frame kept me coming back despite of all the frustrations. After many Q & A sessions with my painting friends, Kara Bigda and Crystal Cook, who had much better success with this surface than I did, I realized that beside learning curve of a new material, what made this surface particular difficult to me and my usual painting method is -- unlike Kara or Crystal, I do not paint wet-on-dry using thin washes very much. Fundamentally, I am not a brushstroke painter but a wash painter, and I love to wet and area and drop in juicy, thick, wet pigments to create the right color and value in one or two applications, instead of patiently building up thin glazes of color on dry surface to achieve the same effect.

After this realization, I decided to revise my working method and give it another go. And sure enough, it worked like a charm! Guaranteed, my first trials are not masterpieces and I still needed much more practice on this surface. But for the first time, I feel I am knocking at the right door and with this method, I could achieve consistent results for all the different imagery I was working on --

April's Passing,  Watercolor on Ampersand Aquaboard, 6"h x 6"w, WIP 1

So, here's the method I currently use to work on Aquabord:

1. Use lots and lots of water and very thin pigments for any large area washes (I am talking about onle 4-5 square inches). You can either wet it first, and keep your board on a tilt to let excessive water drain off its surface instead of pool on it (use a towel underneath your board to absorb all the run-off water if you'd like to keep your table top dry and clean), or you can directly work on dry surface (I would wet the entire surface at least once before painting on it, to break the surface tension and release the trapped air bubbles on the surface coating). The secret is to keep this first wash very light in pigment. If the area is really large, you will likely observe the first part of wash start drying as you continue applying it to the other areas. This is normal. Do not attempt to go back and rewet or paint-into the dried edge, as it would wash away pigments in that area and create nasty blooms or white rings. It is very easy to remove any ugly or dark edge on this surface -- after everything has dried, you can simple go over it with clean water and use a soft brush to smooth-off pigments, or glaze over it with a second wash. Sometimes, leaving imperfections in a wash creates good surface interest and does not need to be smoothed out at all, like what you can see in "Remembering June" below:

Remembering June,  Watercolor on Ampersand Aquaboard, 6"h x 6"w, WIP 1

2. Whenever you want to achieve soft edge, use slightly dense pigment-to-water ratio, lay the shape on dry surface, then immediately run a damp brush (slightly more watery that one that you would normally use for softening edge when painting on watercolor paper) along the edge you want to soften, let the pigment move into the newly wet area, and soften the leading edge of this area again -- you may have to do this several times until the leading edge of wet areas no long seem to contain any pigments. If the pigments have run to areas you do not want it to go, when the whole area is still damp, you can actually use the damp brush to push pigment back and "erase" it from those areas. All the soft edges on the rose petals in "April's Passing" are achieved using this method. When doing this, I am usually working one soft shape at a time, in very small areas -- the secret of working on this surface is to have patience and do not attempt to juggle too many balls all at once!

3. If you want to blend two colors in an area like the various hues on the water lily petal in "Remembering June", you can either pre-mix all the hues you want to use in very watery mixtures, and paint them next to each other on dry surface, let them mingle (again, one small area at a time!), or you can paint one hue, soften the edge, wait until the area is dry, then paint the other hue next to it, soften the edge (lots of softening!);

4. When painting darker passages, glazing using watery mixtures many times can work. If the pigments start to build up on surface, it is still possible to glaze over it with wet pigments, but trying to wet the surface first then drop in colors would be quite difficult, as the pigments already on surface at this point would tend to move with the first application of water. In other words, you can glaze multiple times on this surface, and the secret is to lay down each glaze wet-on-dry and do not touch any passage back when the surface is still wet. Alternatively, you can mix your dark colors on palette, and lay them in thickly, then quickly soften the edge with a damp brush. The dark areas above the rose in "April's Passing" is done this way;

5. You can definitely use this surface to its advantage -- utilizing the texture interest created by uneven washes, utilizing brushwork to describe texture or patterns of your subject, utilizing thin-glazes and build them up slowly to achieve luminosity... And the biggest advantage -- you can scrub it using any hard brush to remove various degrees of tints of color, almost back to white, and never have to worry about damaging the surface! If a painting totally goes south, you can hose it off with only a ghost image remaining -- something pastel artists often do and make me envy. Then you can even incorporate that ghost image into your next painting adventure on this revived surface! Often, that's a wonderful starting point of your creativity... 

I'm still learning my ropes regarding this challenging but extremely rewarding surface. And I will continue to share with you what I have learned about it here. -- Big thanks to Kara and Crystal, both of whom have so generously shared their working methods with me when I am on this journey, and both of them have created some stunning paintings on this surface. If you haven't already, be sure to take a look! I promise you will not be disappointed...