Finally, a non-brush! I got a roll of wide washi tape with the thought that I could cut shapes out of it for masking. Of course, it’s midweek, so I’m too tired to really put in the work to do an intricate piece. I did two mini-pieces, fall leaves and a flower.
Once the background layer dried, I removed the tape and painted in the foreground.
Lessons learned:
- This is a project that benefits from more patience than I had today.
- My best tape shapes came after I drew on the tape, but the pattern made it hard to see the lines. I recommend using solid-color tape if you want to do this type of project.
- I needed more paint and/or more layers on the background to make it significantly darker than the foreground; in both cases, it was so light that it kind of ended up tonally matching the foreground. I ended up adding more dark to the flower background after painting the flower, which kind of defeats the purpose of masking.
- The washi tape curled up a bit after application, which made the shapes a bit vague.
- Very wet backgrounds tend to create dark pools along the edges of the tape, or pull back leaving splotches.
- When painting the foreground, it’s hard not to overlap the edges of the masked area. Perhaps next time, it would be good to do a layer of foreground first with soft edges, then mask over it and do the background? Or maybe if the masking is better done with darker background, put down a plain layer of water and do the foreground in soft colors so it’s ok if it blends out?
I don’t really like masking, but sometimes it’s unavoidable! Cutting shapes out of tape is fiddly, but less so, I think, than masking fluid.