The Scratching Watercolor Technique for Beginners

Nov 09, 2022

One of the more challenging parts about painting in watercolor is that we essentially paint in reverse. We paint from our lightest values to our darkest values, so we have to keep the light in mind throughout the entire process.

Now, large, bright areas of our scene, we can paint around. This isn’t usually an issue. What’s more difficult are those little highlights around your scene – the tops of cars on a sunny day, a glint in a window, or light on the top of a person’s shoulders.

These little highlights can be tricky. In today’s video, I’m going to offer you a watercolor technique to regain some of these highlights if you've painted over them. It’s called sgraffito - or scratching.

What is Sgraffito in Watercolor Painting?

Even though it sounds complex, sgraffito is a simple watercolor technique that anyone can use. It comes from the Italian word sgraffire, which means “to scratch,” and this is exactly what we’re going to do! In fact, another term you can use to describe it is simply scratching. Along with watercolor, artists use it when working with ceramics and oil pastels.

The reason we may implement sgraffito in watercolor is that we may not know where we want to preserve these small highlights in our scene until we see the near-finished product. If you've watched many of my painting videos, you know that, traditionally, I will use some white gouache at the end of my scene. I have nothing against using gouache to create some of these highlights in my scene, but recently I tried scratching instead.

So, I wanted to show you this method, give you a few tips for using it, and cover the pros and cons of this basic watercolor technique.

Tips When Using the Scratching Watercolor Technique

Here are three recommendations for using this painting method in your painting practice:

You only want to use sgraffito on high quality paper. If you try to scratch away at cheap watercolor paper or sketch paper, you’ll likely tear a hole right through the paper. Even on high quality paper, make sure you just scratch the surface to expose the white og the paper.
Scratch only on dry pigment, not wet paint. If you are working with wet watercolor paint when you scratch, the paint may collect in the indent you created instead of revealing the white of the paper.
If you watch the video, you’ll notice that I implement this method with a knife. But you can also scratch using the back of your paintbrush, a credit card, or sandpaper. Experiment a bit and see what different effects you can achieve.

Pros and Cons of Sgraffito in Watercolor

After scratching out highlights in a few of my paintings, I’ve gathered a list of pros and cons of scratching out highlights in your watercolor paintings.

Pros:

Sgraffito is great for when you need really sharp, hard edges.
With high quality paper, you can scratch off just the pigment without creating a hole in the paper.
It’s an incredibly effective and efficient way to get some precise brights back into your scene.

Cons:

You have to make sure that your watercolor paint is dry before you use this strategy. If you try when paint is still wet, it is not going to have the right effect.
It’s permanent. You cannot correct it. If you scratch something out and then try to go back over and lighten it, that is not going to work.
The sound it makes is not exactly pleasant, but this is a minor problem.