Mike Maihack

SuperBatober 05 - MAP

Added 2023-10-04 17:01:00 +0000 UTC

Guess I gotta draw Kara in a space suit now. Oh, darn! :)

This was a fun one. I didn't want to draw your typical parchment style map so decided that a star chart might be something a little more different (plus I got to design a simple space outfit for Babs). The only trick is, for someone like me who aims not to use any acrylic white paint on my watercolors, I wasn't quite sure how I was going to go about said star chart. Super easy digitally colored, but more of a challenge when painted traditionally.

Then I remembered back in art school I once used some sort of rubber cement or masking fluid, so went out and found me some of this stuff:

It's very watery but paints pretty smoothly. You use an inexpensive watercolor brush to apply it and thankfully, even with an inexpensive brush, I've gotten pretty adept at painting a thin line. It also dries very quick. Here's what it looks like when it does.

Then you can just watercolor over the stuff, lightly erasing over the gum to remove it. It comes off incredibly quick and easy, with absolute no wear and tear to the paper it's on. You just gotta be patient enough to let your watercolor completely dry first, because that will definitely tear if you erase too soon (as you can see in my first test painting here).

When you're done you get a crisp "white as the paper you're watercoloring on" line! I was really happy with the results.

It's a bit more time consuming to paint this way but now that I know exactly how this masking gum works, I'm looking forward to opportunities to use it again.