A Useful Technique For Painting Falling Snow With Water Colour

Artists have developed all sorts of tricks that help them show various effects within their painting

. Painting a winter scene that requires falling snow, can be one of the more trickier ones to get right.

The amateur artist will often use opaque white to 'spatter' over the picture, although this lacks the lightness of touch required for something as delicate as snow. The best way to show falling snow in a scene, is a trick using salt. It is possible to use normal table salt for this, but better results can be had with ground rock salt. Salt can be much more subtle than paint and produces 'little stars' around each salt crystal.

The most important part of this technique is knowing when to apply the salt, it's a good idea to practice this first before committing it to your painting. Applying the salt when paint is too wet will cause too much of the salt to melt creating overly large snowflakes, which can also run into each other. If you leave it too long and the paint is too dry the effect just won't work.

When you're confident that the timing is right and you apply the salt you can leave the paper flat to stop the flakes merging or tilt it so that the flakes to run into each other, this produces some interesting blizzard effects. The little star formations can take a few minutes to form so leave the paper undisturbed until ready. When the paint is totally dry the salt is just brushed off.

Here are some of the key points

1. Don't be tempted to use too much salt, it can quickly become overworked.

2. Avoid "placing" the salt grains, let them fall naturally.

3. The principle does not work paint that has been re-wetted after drying.

And finally, with experience, some interesting effects can be created by mixing a little salt into the pigment and applying it as a wash.

by: Rob Tyrrell

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