Using Masking Fluid

Welcome to Cheap Joe's Test Studio! Today I'm going to show you how to use masking fluid. Most of you have probably already used it, but there are some little things that I think might help you even if you have used it, and I hope so.

I have drawn this a little heavy with a marker so that you can see it, and we're going to use Cheap Joe's Masking Fluid first. Cheap Joe's Masking Fluid comes with a little brush in it, isn't that nice? So you don't have to put your good brushes in the masking fluid.

What you want to do is be sure your paper is dry--never put masking fluid on wet paper, you will ruin the paper and will never be able to get that masking fluid off there. Carefully, put the masking fluid where you want white to be after you've painted. We're using this to protect our white paper to keep it white while we paint without having to meticulously paint around it. It's a great way to do that.

The second one is Pebeo. Pebeo Drawing Gum is a masking fluid made by Pebeo that has color in it. What you want to do here--there's no brush so you want to take an old brush, this is an old nylon brush which is perfect for the masking fluid--and very carefully, wet your brush first, and start applying the masking fluid over the area that you want to keep white. It's a little easier to see when you're applying it than the Cheap Joe's masking fluid but they both dry with a color on them so you can see them.

It must dry completely before you start painting it, so we're going to let this dry and then come back and finish it.

Now, I have already prepared this one in the essence of time, and it's dry so you want to be sure the masking fluid is perfectly dry. Now, quickly, I'm going to just put some color over the whole thing so that you get the idea. I have activated some color already and we're just going to come in here and add some color. I'm going right over the masking fluid and that's the reason for it--I don't have to worry here, and this is going to be so quick. Now we'll come back in here with some heavier stuff just simply so that you'll be able to see what we have done with the masking fluid.

We are going to let that dry now and come back to it and remove the masking fluid.

We have dried this little piece where we had the masking fluid, and you can see where the masking fluid is, and I'm going to take a rubber cement remover, this little gadget is el-cheapo, but it really works well. You just take the corner and start doing it just like that and you can see the rubber cement coming off and you can take it off there. Look there, now we've got a little white house in an otherwise dark area. You can also use a nice eraser for this, but you have to be careful which eraser you use or you will leave color on the paper, and you don't want to do that. Now we'll take the brush and add a little bit of light direction coming into this, and that would be all we need to do.

Dry paper, wet brush, let it dry completely, do your painting, let that dry completely, then do the rubber cement. That's all there is to it!