Hello 

Welcome to the FLOAT-YOUR-PIGMENT Newsletter #130, Masking Fluid

I hope everyone had a great Halloween last week. For some reason we hardly had any kids come to our door this year and that means we are stuck with loads of candy. Luckily I have a load of students that I can bring it to, so get ready if you are in any of my classes!

This coming Wednesday I will be dropping off some of my artwork to the Palette and Chisel in Chicago. They will be having their Fall Clearance this coming Saturday. All Artwork is $300 or Less and you can do your holiday shopping and pick up some great deals on some amazing artwork. I will post on my Facebook page what I will be putting in the show as soon as I decide on what I will put into this show. 

This coming Thursday is the Lakes Region Watercolor Guild meeting and demonstration. This will be only the second time I have run the meeting since becoming president of the club 3 months ago, last month I was teaching my workshop at Cheap Joe's. For more info on the meeting and demonstration go to www.LRWG.org

Yes to Class at the Civic Center Libertyville, Thursday Nov. 9th
Yes to Class at The Antioch Fine Arts Foundation, Thursday Nov. 9th

For those that paint in watercolor, masking fluid is probably a technique you have heard of and probably have used at some point. There are a lot of names for masking fluid, like art maskoid, liquid frisket, liquid resist, frisk film, mask latex and mask liquid. What these products do is cover the paper or a dry colored wash on paper to save the paper or colored wash while painting over the mask with another wash. Then when you are finished with the wash and it has dried you then rub off the masking fluid leaving the underside clean to reveal a shape of clean white paper or previous colored wash.

Most masking fluids come in a bottle where you have to dip a brush, rubber brush, lining tool or something sharp into the bottle and then draw with it onto the paper. Since it is rubber and drys to a dry rubbery film, it can easily ruin a brush or clog a lining tool or just become a total mess. Then there are the bottles with the tiny hollow tube that you use to draw masking fluid with and these usually clog even though they have a pin on the cap to unclog them. Then there is the problem if you don't use the masking fluid a lot, it then has a tendency to dry up to a large jar/bottle of rubber. Masking fluid always seems to be a pain to use but sometimes it is necessary to use when painting a large clean wash without having to go around small objects .

Most of the problems listed above is why I don't like using masking fluid and the biggest problem I see with applying masking is that if you don't get it applied to the exact drawing it leaves a very hard edge that is very hard to soften or correct.

There are many like myself that don't like using masking fluid because of the hard edged lines it leaves or because it can sometimes be a mess or hard to apply correctly. That was until a student of mine told me about a masking fluid product that I think is the best on the market, The product is Molotow Masking Fluid

This masking fluid comes in a pen/marker like the gold and silver marker pens that you shake and press the front nib onto a hard surface to fill the drawing nib. You apply masking fluid by drawing with this pen and when you are done you pop on the cap and it will be ready the next time you use the masking. So easy and simple and these pens can be refilled. They sell a refill bottle that I found you can also apply masking with.

It comes in 2 sizes, 2mm nib and a 4mm nib. If you like using a brush instead of the marker pen you can still use this fluid by pouring some in a small container and just brushing it on.

I have only done a small amount of testing with these pens but so far they do a great job, 2 artists thumbs up!

There is another way to get the whites back instead of using masking fluid, use fluid acrylics and heavy bodied acrylics together like I did in this painting above.