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| Supplies |
Today's project is an experiment in painting tissue paper for future projects--namely, more tissue flowers. In the past, I would paint individual layers (or pairs of layers) of tissue before making my tissue flowers. As I was falling asleep last night, I wondered--what would happen if I painted an entire sheet of tissue and then cut the layers from the painted larger sheet?
This would be beneficial in a variety of ways: First, the tissue would produce flowers that would be color coordinated from the same sheet. Second. if I could produce more than one sheet of tissue that used the same colors then the entire collection of flowers could be based on a particular color scheme. Finally, the production time would be significantly reduced since I could paint quite a few sheets of tissue at night and have them dry while I am at work or while sleeping.
Step One: Collect the Supplies
To start, I collect all of the supplies before I start painting. If the picture above, you see most of the supplies that I will use: corrugated plastic panel, my collection of watercolor concentrate, a paint brush (actually, an old 1" glue brush), a fine tip water bottle with clean water, and a spray bottle with clean water. What is missing from the picture is a large cup of water to rinse my brush and a huge roll of paper towels
Step Two: Adhering the Tissue to the plastic panel
Once I have all of the materials assembled, I stray the plastic sheet lightly with water. I am lucky that my sheet of tissue and my plastic panel are the same size. I gently place the tissue on the panel and then spritz the top of the tissue with plain water from the spray bottom. I don't saturate the paper with water. I simply place a little water to keep the tissue in place.
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Tissue in place
(Note: that rectangle that you see is the TV tray
that I am using to hold up the plastic panel) |
Step Three: Prepare the watercolor palette
The next step is to prepare the paints. I get my plastic watercolor palette and choose five colors to use. I arrange them from dark to light. I usually use two dark colors, one medium color, and two light/highlight colors in my palette.
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| Undiluted watercolor palette |
Each color is made from 10 drops of concentrated color. I then dilute the color with water from the fine tip water bottle.
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| Dilute watercolor |
Step Four: Paint
I add each color in succession going from dark to light until all five colors are added to the tissue. The important point is to dab color rather than paint. A light touch is definitely needed since the tissue can tear after each added layer of color and as the tissue get wetter.
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| Color 1 |
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| Color 2 |
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| Color 3 |
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| Color 4 |
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| Color 5--Final Sheet |
Step 5: Dry Time and Clean Up
After all of the layers of paint have been added, all that is left to do is wait for the tissue to dry and clean up the supplies. Here is the final palette so you can see how much color was actually used. I tend to use less of the darker pigment when I start and all of the medium and lighter/highlight colors.
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| Final Palette |
Also, when cleaning up. I save the paper towels and let them dry so I can use them for a different project. No need to waste product especially since it requires no extra work.
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| Colored Paper Towels for a different project |
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