Watercolor Resist Background Technique

I love how this technique ends up turning out. However, it does take some time to dry.

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Here are the steps:

1. Get a piece of card stock completely wet.

Don't use watercolor paper. It’s too absorbent.

2. Add watercolor to your wet card stock.

3. Add different complementary colors if wanted:

4. Cover the whole piece of card stock:

5. Place embroidery thread and other absorbent materials onto the wet card stock:

add fibers to background

background using fibers

6. Place a piece of heavy glass on top of everything.

I used a glass baking dish.

7. Once dry, remove the string and any other fiber-like materials.

You should be left with an awesome resist where the thread soaked up the color!

fibers soak up the watercolor

I made an artist trading card with part of my background:

Check out another mixed-media background tutorial using a stencil.

If you love these background tutorials, order my ebook with 30 of these techniques packaged into an 18-page PDF file.

And here you can purchase the materials here: