Unloading Lobster Traps

Unloading Lobster Traps

at the Cape Porpoise Pier
in Kennebunkport, Maine on
March 1, 2019, painted March 15, 2019
12" x 9" (w x h), Daniel Smith, Schmincke Horadam,
and Winsor & Newton watercolors, selected for light fastness
and permanence, wax resist, and Uniball waterproof fade
proof ink on 140 lb. Fabriano Artistico cold press
rough 100% cotton extra white watercolor paper
framed, including sales tax + shipping $195.00
 
Technique - About that Texture
 
You only see the texture in certain areas, not the sky, not the lobsterman, etc. The rough paper helped make it possible using the high bumps of the paper and wax. I rubbed a clear wax paraffin crayon over the lobster trap area before painting the colors. The wax covers the high points of the paper. It resists water, hence watercolor, producing the textured highlights.

I picked this technique up when looking closely at a John Singer Sargent painting at his major MFA show in Boston. He used rough paper a lot. You can use any clear paraffin. Sargent probably used a clear wax candle. He used wax resist a lot, quite a lot, reflections, highlights.

I've also used it to make a rope line in water. Just the wax line makes the rope. And I've used it when painting oranges, the rough peel's highlights. Also, you can layer the wax with layers of watercolor colors, alternating the wax and watercolor to resist only that color thus not layering and creating another color leaving the bumps with the color already present.

Wax resist is different from dragging your semi-dry brush lightly over rough paper. When you drag a semi-dry bush over rough paper the whites are the valleys of the paper, watercolor hitting the high points of the paper. But with wax resist the textured whites are the tops of the paper's bumps.

Paraffin wax crayons are available at Dick Blick. They say Susan Scheewe Wax Resist Sticks but then ship Grumbacher Resist Sticks, same thing, $4.49 for four wax stick crayons. But any clear wax will do.