Welcome at To be defined

Welcome at To be defined, a website filled with creativity. Here you will find numerous manuals in words and images on various subjects. On this page you can only see a selection. Choose from the menu on the left for more articles on your favorite topic.
Frost, Copyright Jan BesselinkFrost, which you find on trees or buildings in winter, is something very difficult to draw or paint. Especially in watercolor, where the "white parts" are created by leaving bits of paper unpainted. Here are some tips to achieve this effect.


 
LiquidWaxMethod 1:
If you haven't painted the part where the frost should go yet, you can cover it with masking fluid or wax. Don't apply it as a sharply defined area. Also, carefully add some specks of masking fluid with a fine brush to ensure that the transition from the masking fluid isn't so sharp; otherwise, you'll get such an unnatural transition from white to painted. Then paint the subject with the frost using watercolor. Also, paint over the masking fluid. This way, color will also get between the specks made with the brush. Once you've removed the masking fluid, you can lightly touch the white with a little color. Wax, depending on the texture of your paper, gives a very different effect than masking fluid. Be aware, you can't paint over wax anymore. The wax repels the liquid.

LightenMethod 2:
If you have already painted the subject where the frost should go, then you need to work differently. Dab away the color on the parts where the frost should go. Do this by first wetting the paint and then gently absorbing the wet paint with a clean brush or tissue. You can also use a dampened cotton swab and gently remove the pigment from the paper with circular motions. Be careful not to go through the paper. Preferably, use this technique on paper of at least 200gsm. You can't add real details anymore; for that, you need to use method 3 or 4.

sgrafittoMethod 3:
Another way to apply frost after you've already painted the subject is sgraffito. You can scrape away the color with fine sandpaper or a knife. Usually, you scrape down to the paper, which means you need to use thicker paper to prevent going all the way through, at least 200gsm. Preferably, use the side of a knife or razor blade; then you only remove the raised paper fibers. This leaves behind some pigment, resulting in a softer transition. The advantage of sgraffito over using masking fluid is that it looks less artificial and yields a more natural and less tight result. The effect of sgraffito depends greatly on the paper used. Coarse paper gives a coarser texture than fine paper, where it can almost be lines or areas..

Chinese of opaque white Method 4:
Another option to achieve frost on paper is with opaque gouache paint and a super thin brush. However, this requires a lot of patience, and you must be careful not to make it look too heavy. Therefore, apply not a thick layer, but a very thin layer, where you can still see through. Apply some with a sponge or something similar, so it's not so tight and smooth. The frost isn't a neat layer but is slightly thicker in some places than in others. The advantage of this method is that you have little chance of damaging the paper. Of course, various combinations of the mentioned tips are possible.

Paint, pigment in pitsPencil, no pigment in pitsFrost in a drawing.
Watercolor behaves differently than, for example, pencil. When you make indentations in the paper using a pin or an embossing pen, for example, with watercolor, the pigment will collect in these indentations, whereas with pencil, these deeper parts of the paper are not affected. In short, with watercolor, it creates spots with a lot of pigment, and with pencil, it creates spots without pigment. Quite a clear difference. For example, you can indicate frost in a drawing by making indentations with a pin or an embossing pen and then going over them with (colored) pencil.

Do you want to experiment with frost yourself? And do you have another good tip? Let us know, and we'll add it. Of course, there are many beautiful pictures of frost to be found on the internet. Below, I've put a few for you.

Copyright Corbis Copyright Corbis Copyright Fred van Wijk Copyright Corbis
Copyright Jalos-onzetuin.web-log.nl Copyright Corbis Copyright Bamboo Giant Nederland Copyright Corbis