As much as I obsess about different paint pigments and their properties, I usually don’t pay much attention to lifting vs. staining. Recently, I’ve encountered a few books with interesting lifting techniques, so I thought I would revisit by experimenting with trying the same techniques with lifting and staining pigments.
About Lifting Pigments
What is lifting?
Lifting refers to any technique that involves picking up paint off of the paper. For example:
- Blotting with a paper towel or sponge while still wet. This is often done to create clouds or other random blobs of white, or to soften edges.
- Thirsty brush, which refers to running a lightly damp brush through the paint while still wet. As long as the brush is less wet than the paint on the paper, the paint will be sucked back up into the brush. (If the brush is wetter, it will deposit water onto the paper, creating blooms.) Thirsty brush techniques are great for softening edges or creating lightened lines, as in rays of sun.
- Dry lifting is much more challenging: that is, scrubbing away dry paint with a wet paper towel or brush.
Which pigments are lifting/staining?
Different pigments have different capacities for being lifted cleanly, leaving perfectly white paper behind. Opaque and/or granulating colors are often lifting, including Cerulean Blue, Ultramarine Blue, Cobalts, earth pigments, etc. (Cadmiums are opaque but do stain.) Most of my experience with noticing which pigments are lifting is accidental: I accidentally lift them while trying to glaze or layer over them.
The opposite of lifting is staining. Most transparent colors are staining, especially phthalo blues and greens. The most staining pigment I know of is Dioxazine Violet. Staining pigments are great for glazing or layering over, because they stay absolutely put. Dry lifting techniques are totally impossible on staining pigments, which, once they dry, are like permanent ink. But my experience is that blotting and thirsty brush techniques work pretty well on any paint, as long as it’s wet.
| Color Slot | Some Lifting Pigments | Some Staining Pigments |
|---|---|---|
| Yellow | Yellow Ochre (PY42/PY43), Naples Yellow Deep (PBr25) | Nickel Azo Yellow (PY150), Iso Yellow Deep (PY110), Hansa Yellows (PY3, PY97, PY65) |
| Orange | Transparent Orange (PO71) | |
| Red/Pink | Indian Red (PR101), Potter’s Pink (PR233) | Quinacridones (PV19, PR122, PR202, etc) |
| Violet | Ultramarine Violet (PV15) | Dioxazine Violet (PV23) |
| Blue | Ultramarine Blue (PB29), Cobalt Blue (PB28), Cerulean Blue (PB35/PB36) | Phthalo Blue (PB15), Prussian Blue (PB27) |
| Green | Viridian (PG18), Chrome Oxide Green (PG17) | Phthalo Green (PG7/PG36) |
Painting Experiments
In Zoltan Szabo’s 70 Favorite Watercolor Techniques, Zoltan Szabo demonstrates wispy (cirrus) clouds painted by using the edge of a thirsty flat brush while the sky color is still wet. I first tried this with lifting sky colors: Cobalt Blue and Cerulean Blue, on my standard Saunders Cold Press paper.
The effect is fairly subtle. I do think the colors lifted, in that I got almost to paperwhite (though I did have to do some blotting in some place). But the base color is already pretty light so there’s not much contrast.
I then noticed that in the book, Szabo does say the sky color needs to be dark for you to be able to see the shapes well. He also doesn’t actually bother to use lifting colors in his demo; he uses a gray mixed not just with Ultramarine and Gold Ochre but also Quin Magenta and Phthalo Blue. (He notes though that when using Phthalo Blue the lifted clouds may have a faint blue appearance.)
I decided to try again, this time painting the sky with a staining mix of Phthalo Blue GS and a bit of Quin Magenta (PR202).
I like this one much better. The staining colors lifted just as well when wet; and while the granulating liftable colors tended to lift in a cloudy, nebulous way, the transparent staining colors created crisp lines with clear edges.
For completeness’ sake, I tried a dry lift, using Cobalt Blue for the sky. This is said to be a very liftable pigment.
It’s definitely liftable (compared to something like Phthalo Blue where, if I tried to rub it off with water after it dried, it would go nowhere). But compared to wet lifting methods, this lift is much more subtle, with very soft edges. You have to go over it a few times to get to the white of the paper. It looks like an erase through pencil, for sure.
Aurora
This aurora is based on an example in The Watercolorist’s Essential Notebook: Landscapes by Gordon MacKenzie. The example painting is a monochrome aurora painting done by lifting the dark sky color while wet using the edge of a thirsty flat brush. I liked how this gave aurora shapes that distinctive aurora shape: crisp edge on top, with fading stripes emanating downward.
I decided experimented with this to see if I could get colorful auroras by working in layers. I painted a layer of green and pink color, then when dry, painted over it with a dark sky mix and tried the flat brush lifting technique.
In my first run at this technique, I thought to use staining colors on the lower layer so they would not lift, but went ahead and used staining colors on the second layer figuring it wouldn’t matter as long as I did the lifting while wet.
Bottom layer colors: SH Aureolin Modern (PY151), DS Phthalo Green YS (PG36), HO Quin Magenta (PR122), WN Phthalo Turquoise (PB16)
Top layer colors: Dark sky blue-black made from WN Phthalo Turquoise (PB16) plus DS Quin Magenta (PR202). I also enhanced the bottom a bit with Cobalt Turquoise, which is lifting, but I didn’t lift it. The silhouette shapes are HO Payne’s Gray.
Paper: Saunders Hot Press. Hot Press is said to be easier to lift off of.
Thoughts: I did quite like the shapes I got though I think the lifting method didn’t get me as vibrant color as I wanted. There’s still some dark paint over the bright colors muting them, and I might have also accidentally lifted some of the undercolor.
I thought I’d give this another shot with lifting pigments on the second layer to see if this made a difference.
In this case I used the same colors on the bottom layer, but the top layer was a mix of SH Ultramarine Finest (PB29) and a little WN Venetian Red (PR101) to make it less vibrant. I found it hard to work up a good masstone with the Ultramarine and Venetian Red, so I used wet-from-tube paint, and this resulted in some goopiness and streaks. As with the wispy clouds example, a granulating paint did not lift as crisply as a smooth paint, but it does appear that I was able to uncover more of the green underlayer.
Just to make the variables more complicated, I also did this one on cold press paper instead of hot. So, it’s not necessarily a scientific comparison. Still, I think the lifting-over-staining combination was potentially more successful at uncovering the lower color.
Conclusion
Despite having better success uncovering the lower layer with lifting pigments, in general, I feel like I just like staining pigments better! When it comes to thirsty-brush lifting, the transparent/smooth/staining pigments lift more crisply and elegantly. Plus, staining pigments can be used on underlayers without smearing inadvertently. Staining = the best.
It might be worth mentioning that the staining properties of a pigment can vary (e.g. phthalo blue is often used in sky / fake manganese colors, and many of those are designed to be lifting) and that some brands are just more/less staining than others (many Qor paints are very staining, although they lift nicely).
I just mention this because someone might end up using a phthalo blue that is MORE staining than yours, and be disappointed. (Btw, I tried the aurora thing with a mix of PV23 and PG7, and very little lifted even from wet.)
Also, when lifting from dry, I don’t exactly scrub. I run a moist brush over the area with a normal amount of pressure, and then blot. Several times. Scrubbing just feels too brush-killing, and this softer approach seems to work well. (Maybe I should do some testing, though.)
Oof, when taking about Qor paints, I meant to say that SOME OF THEIR EARTHS lift nicely. Not all of their paints. Because the strainers don’t.
I’m experimenting with lifting for portrait work lately. I thought a highly lifting paint would be best, and the art supply store I was dealing with was low on stock, so I settled on some DS Italian Venetian Red. Well, that was a mistake.
Like you observed, just because it’s “easy” lifting doesn’t mean it’s easier to work with when….lifting. Getting subtle effects or gradations just isn’t an option like it is on low staining paints. And, of course, layering is out of the question too. Even though it’s also one of the weakest (most vehicle diluted?) DS paints I have ever used.
I’ll stop just short of calling it bad and the worst DS paint in my collection, because maybe I’m missing something? I used the leaching technique Bruce MacEvoy recommends for Primatek paints and it just barely makes it usable for me, though not for skin. Between the pigment I used to test and the amount of vehicle I leached off, I’m able to fit the whole 15 mL tube into one full pan.
That said, PR101/102 seems like it can be great for portrait and lifting work. Holbein Light Red and Van Gogh Red Oxide both were useful to me for this purpose. I just know now not to go for the max granulating, lowest staining, and super weak tinting version I think aiming for weak/middle of the road staining is my goal.
…Man they don’t even have natural source as an excuse, IVR uses PR101. I have no idea what the logic was!