Surface Tension: First Impressions (watercolour)

Acrylics and Oils – Oliver’s second instalment of his series of articles; Surface Tension: Drawing & Painting on Aluminium. You can read the first of these here: Surface Tension: Drawing & Painting on Aluminium Part 1 and the final instalment here: Surface Tension: Acrylics, Oils and Conclusions
My first impressions on seeing the Jacksons Art aluminum panels was one of aesthetic beauty, a smooth grey metallic surface. As the panels are already prepared and treated with a chemical for direct painting onto (which you cannot see) it was strange to even consider applying watercolours directly on to this surface.
Watercolour on Aluminium
Materials: Watercolour, Gum Arabic, Chalk Pastel and Carbon Stick.
Although I liked the nature of the surface, being able to move the paint around in a fluid fashion, due to the smooth surface, I did discover an issue, in that you couldn’t build up layers of watercolour and therefore could not optically mix the colours. The reason being is that due to the ultra-smooth surface that is a non-absorbent surface like paper, and therefore the watercolour, once dried sits on the surface. When you tried to add another colour and a layer of paint on top it reactivating the layer already applied and the two coloured layers mixes. This can be frustrating, especially if by accident, you splashed a drop of water on to the surface, which in turn, reactivates the colour below meaning you may have to rework that particular area. As a positive, it was interesting to be able to take a scraper, knife or other sharp implement to loosely scratch the surface, which then easily lifts the watercolour paint, back to the aluminium.
Creating Texture
The usual techniques of using salt and cling film worked, as you would normally expect. Although again due to the ultra-smooth surface you need to be extra careful when removing the salt, if you rub too hard you can lift and smudge the watercolour.  When using masking fluid, the application and drying time was similar to that of working on paper. However, the masking fluid was much easier to remove due to the smooth surface, but again, if you use a finger, sponge or rag to remove the masking fluid can smudge the watercolour so using a knife to lift an edge was required before fully lifting of and not rubbing to remove.
First Watercolour – 28cm x 15

PAINTING 1

Second Watercolour – 28cm x 17

PAINTING 2

PAINTING 2 DETAIL

Although looking back at my first watercolour paintings I loved the sense that you can move the watercolour around on this ultra-smooth surface, lift of and replace time and time again, which could not be achieved as easily by working directly on to a watercolour paper. But it begs the question, “Would I look to use this surface over a watercolour paper for a pure watercolour painting?” and my answer would be, no. It is not an issue of price although watercolour colour paper is around ten times cheaper! I feel you have more scope and control with watercolour paper, allowing you to optical mixing colours, work on a white surface (although the aluminium could be primed but this then makes me question why bother using aluminium), and finally subtlety when creating textures.
Drawing directly onto the aluminium
My brief explorations of drawing directly on to the aluminium panels proved interesting, which created an almost a silver point effect. I found that the surface does take a range of drawing materials, such as graphite, pen and oil pastels but as you would expect not chalk pastels, (as pastels need a surface with a tooth to hold the dry pigment).
Working with pencil and graphite I found that you can create sharp and fine lines but again due to the smoothness of the surface. However, this is not appropriate to create a reductive drawing and using an eraser, as the eraser smudges the graphite on the page.
 

DRAWING 1

The ghostly image (seen above) has been created mainly through a series of accidental steps. I had initially developed a thick oil painting on this surface but decided to wipe it of as I didn’t like the result. I then started a pencil drawing, adding Gum Arabic, which allowed me to move the graphite around on the surface. However, because there had been oil on the surface beforehand and I had not cleaned the surface thoroughly the Gum Arabic just sat on the surface, as the oil resisted water. I then wiped off this layer of Gum Arabic and parts of the graphite were also lifted leaving behind this image.