Jun 28, 20202 min read

Evaporative Textures version 2

Evaporative Textures – Blog

Evaporative textures are a super fun way to create new textures and digital images. The original textures I created were using a recipe from Bonny Pierce Lhotka’s book “Hacking the Digital Print”.

I found clear acrylic frames at AC Moore. I’m sure they can be picked up at another craft store. They are 1” deep. You need a warm dry place to do this. I did it outside on a table (and had to cover them on days we were expecting rain). Make sure your surface is level and sunny.

I put about ½” of water in each frame. Some frames have watercolor paper in them, some didn’t. I added Cascade and salt to each frame, and then each of the other frames had something different. I managed to keep track of what I did to each during the days they evaporated (until day 4 and a thunderstorm). Some of the materials I used were: Oxi Clean, baking powder, mica powders in various colors, Daniel Smith metallic powders, Daniel Smith interference colors, Dick Blick liquid watercolors, and Acrylic inks. The acrylic inks didn’t work well. They kind of blobbed and stained.

If you want to photograph your textures as they evaporate, really plan where you put the table because they will be very reflective while the sun is out….just decide what you want. Next time, I’ll move my table to be able to stand over them with a ladder and photograph them with my good camera instead of cell phone.

The unpredictable weather dragged the process out and damaged the stuff in the boxes. I removed the watercolor paper in all but one box day 4 because the paper was waterlogged. 300 weight would have held up, but mine was 140. The thunderstorms on day 4 forced me to quickly move and cover everything up, so I no longer knew which box was which. After everything was dry on day 5, I photographed both sides on top of white paper, up in the air and on top of a stand. The front is very reflective and I had to work around light and reflections.