![orange red yellow water color drips orange red yellow water color drips](https://i.pinimg.com/736x/e3/5a/a3/e35aa37e5ec13a078b8e0344e80e1d21.jpg)
We recommend starting with more muted colors and building up the intensity of the colors as you add more layers. Don’t blot everywhere or your detailed sprays and drips will disappear. Or try blotting off excess water with a paper towel in certain areas. We squeezed air in and out of an empty catsup bottle to push the puddles of water around the paper.
![orange red yellow water color drips orange red yellow water color drips](https://thumbs.dreamstime.com/b/red-paint-splatter-yellow-abstract-background-splatters-copy-space-116114490.jpg)
Move your stencils around before you work on your next layers to get interesting layers and overlapping marks.
![orange red yellow water color drips orange red yellow water color drips](http://arsenal-s3.gomedia.us/wp-content/uploads/gma-watercolor-texture-pack-01-hero-shot.jpg)
You could speed up this process by anchoring them with rocks and leaving them to dry in the sun. The small travel-sized spray bottle pictured below makes a fine mist, while our larger sprayers made bigger droplets.Ĭonsider leaving your work to dry before adding more layers. You can see the paint starts to gather and bead around the plastic stencil shapes. Or squeeze the pipette right against the paper? What marks can you make when you wave the pipette as you drip the paint? What happens when you use gravity to move your drips? What happens when you spray from high above the paper? Experiment with the height and angle you spray or drip the paint. This pipette is filled with blue food coloring (search “transfer pipette” for the kind we used here). Here we used a spray bottle filled with yellow Kool-Aid. It will still be very wet, but this will help a little!īegin experimenting with your different bottles and droppers. If you only have thin paper, put some layers of newspaper underneath to help absorb the extra water. Thicker paper like watercolor paper will absorb more water than thin paper (like printer paper), and is less likely to tear when wet. Position your stencils on your paper, we positioned our teardrops on a large piece of watercolor paper. You don’t need to use stencils at all for this project! Only add them if you want to experiment with drips and sprays further. You can use any paper or plastic to make your stencils, the thicker the better so the colored water doesn’t seep through (unless that’s the look you’re going for) and cut them into any shape you like with scissors or an Xacto knife. Next, we cut out a variety of simple teardrop shapes from a leftover sheet of plastic we had. Fill up to half-way with water (or paint) and it will stay spill-free if it get’s knocked over!įirst mix the Kool-Aid and food coloring into your various containers, for this tutorial we stuck to lemon and grape Kool-Aid, and yellow and blue food coloring to keep our palette from getting too muddy. Cut a hole slightly larger than your pipette or eye-dropper and snap the lid securely to the container. Worried about too much spilling? We made our own “no-spill” paint cups for the pipettes made from deli containers. We found that using several drip-makers made the best variety of marks on the paper. Unsweetened drink mixes such as Kool-Aid are fun to use because when they dry the fruity smells stay behind, so your paintings will be scratch and sniff!Ĭollect some clean, empty spray bottles and droppers from around the house, or find some new travel-sized bottles at your grocery or big box stores. For this tutorial we used Kool-Aid and food coloring mixed with water to make our colors, but you could use any watercolors or watered-down water-based paints you already have. Spring and summer are prefect times of year for outdoor art making! Step outside and experiment making drip and spray paintings with supplies you may already have around your house.