INTRO WATERCOLOURS DROPS 1 by Maria Balcells intro OLD

TRANSPARENCY QUICK COLOUR TEST
There is an easy way to find out if your colours are transparent or opaque. What you need is just a Permenent marker. Paint a line on a
watercolour Cold Pressed paper about 1, 5 cm wide and let it dry completely. Then paint with your brush some lines with the colours and
wait again until they are dry.
Now look at the results:
Transparent colours are nearly invisible. You can hardly see them.
Semi-Transparent colours can be easily recognized.
Opaque colours can be seen very well and cover the black line.
Non-Staining: Non- Staining colours are colours, whose pigments remain on the surface once dry and are easy to be removed. If you lift up some colour with a brush, the
white paper appears on the surface.
Staining: Staining colours are colours that when they touch the wet paper they soak deep into it and remain in the under layers. These colours cannot be removed.
Granulation: Some pigments granulate naturally; they do not dissolve well in water and have the tendency to be separated. These pigments have letter G on the label.
Cobalt Blue for example, has the tendency to granulate.
STAINING QUICK COLOUR TEST
HOW TO TEST?
Paint the surface of a watercolour paper with one colour and let it dry. Once dry lift up with the side of a synthetic flat
brush, some colour. If you get the paper white, your colour is non-Staining.
TIP: Staining colours like to be mixed with staining colours, and Non-Staining colours do the same, they can be very
nicely mixed with their similar, but when you mix Staining with Non-Staining colours the pigments go to one side of the
wet area as if they were attracted by a magnet.
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