What Is Spattering And Layering?…

Spattering is a way of achieving a brushstroke free painting at random, and an on the spur of the moment kind of look. This can be done leaving no brush marks by spattering or actually flicking your paint on to your support. This will leave marks that are dappled, speckled or even mottled.

Introducing these sort of textures into your work can be used for several reasons. You can use them to give the look of rough surfaces, or even to show different elements, for instance, in a landscape painting.

Supposing you are doing a beach scene, you could use this method to create your pebbled beach or bushes in the foreground. In a country scene you could do old, broken down stone walls, or an old street with cobble stones.

Quite intricate patterning can be achieved. However, your patterning at random can be made by using just a fine delicate mist of colour or using quite a few colours. This will certainly enhance your work and will give any flat areas of colour a lift.

So, what type of paint should you use? Gouache, thinned oil paint, watercolours or any liquid in fact. So you have any number of choices.

You need to make certain that you work on a flat surface, as you do not want the paint to drip and ruin your required effect.

So, what tools might you use for this? Well, an assortment in fact. A nailbrush, toothbrush, a spray with a pump, bristled brush, mouth spray or different forms of artists brushes. As an example, a soft brush or stencil brush.

Now you are ready to spray or splash to your heart’s content. So get ready, load your brush with thinned paint and you need a flick with your wrist action. This will give you different sized, large paint, splashing.

Or fill the brush and hold it over the surface then hit the handle with another brush or something firm. You could build up dense layers this way. Alternatively you could spray with any sort of household spray, or even sprays like you see for sale in chemists.

How about another method? Most people own a nailbrush for instance! Now get your dish and mix up your paint with water. Put you brush in the mix and then take it out and remove any surplus paint. Making sure your brush is held over your support, run something hard through the bristles, like a knife, so that it will spatter.

The speckled look will actually be achieved according to how near or how far away you are from your work when you apply this method.

You can mix a wash with Gum Arabic. Put it on your support and leave it to dry. Then spatter water over it. This method can be repeated a few times.

You could use the rough water colour paper, spattering different colours intermittently, but ensuring each colour dries first. Similarly, you could use water paper, if it is damp, spatter and just leave it to bleed.