For the past few weeks I have been posting on Monday’s Discovery about my attempts to turn a glue moistener into a large waterbrush. Then intent was to be able to shape the sponges and fill them with the color paint I wanted to lay down quickly. In playing with these, however, I have found another application that I rather like. When sketching in the field with a water brush, it is difficult to lay large amounts of color down, like sky or grassy fields. Filling one of these with a blue mix for sky, or just using it to lay the backround wash seems to work fairly well!
Last week, I cut open the cap of this sucker and packed it with polyester batting to help control the flow of water. With out that, the water just streamed out of the moistener and washed the color away just as fast as it layed it on. Once the rubber cement dried to hold the batting in place, this thing worked like a charm! Being that the sponge is synthetic with no natural pits or shapes, I will have to take a pair of scissors to cut and shape it into something more interesting. But it holds paint pretty well and it was able to lay the colors down with some interesting patterns.
I threw this together just to demonstrate it’s effectiveness. I ran out of patience because this is the only thing between me and a beautiful road trip to Hot Springs, Arkansas on the bike!
This is great – shall have to look out for one of those over here!