Using a lot of water and watercolor paper, I apply color in two steps. To simplyfy things I used the same color combo in all three examples (pink and purple watercolors). You can of course use as many colors as you want.
Image 1: This is the initial application of pigment, I wet the paper (from both sides, otherwise it curls on you) and apply a generous amount of pigment with a large brush, everything is nice and wet:
After this you can apply your cling wrap, OR crumbled up and straightened wax paper, OR you can make patterns with the cling wrap, for instance a rose. The next image shows the cling wrap applied to make a rose pattern:
To make the rose, lay your generous piece of cling over your prewash, then hold your fist or finger in the center of it and twist. You can turn your hand, or keep hand steady and turn the paper. When you have enough of a rose, leave it and let dry. This looks very cool if you start out in your prewash with a contrast color in the center, then finishing the wash with another color around it. The dollop of color in the center will make the rose color, the rest the "background".
At this point I like to pick up my piece (lift up from a corner) and cut off excess cling wrap with some large scissors. Its pretty yucky to cut and not exact, just make sure you leave a 1/4 inch rim around the whole piece. Why go through this mess? It will dry much nicer and your cling will not want to lift off the paper too early, also, the next step of adding color is made much easier when its a bit neater :)
You can not cut off excess while the combo is lying on the surface, have to pick it up....
Now comes the fun part. With your piece in the left hand, load up your brush with juicy pigment of a different color, lift up the cling ever so slightly at one of the "veins" and drop in the second color letting it run along the veins to your liking. I do this with most of my pieces, be it cling normal, cling rose or waxpaper. You can turn your piece to let the color run along the different veins formed by the cling or waxpaper. Keep adding color until you like it.
The next image shows three different treatments: Upper left cling scrunch normal, upper right the rose, lower right waxpaper. These pieces are shown while they are drying. All three had the exact same colors and same sequence of treatments: a pink prewash, application of wrap or paper, then addition of purple through the sides, letting it run along the veins.
Here now are the pieces as they have dried. The first one is the waxpaper treatment. This technique is great for "water" "sky" or general greenery like bushes, pasture etc.
The next is the regular cling and scrunch. Remember I used watercolors, so my colors are sortof washed out and muted. You can use other pigments, acrylics, alcohol inks, dye reinkers or whatever strikes your fancy to get more intense coloring:
lastly the rose:
The rose is fun to use as a focal point itself, or, you can cover up the center with your stamped image and have the veins radiating from it, very cool :)
and then, nobody says you can't play with the pieces that you have made! I like to color in the veins with twinkling H2Os for instance:
And then, as a sideline, I tried doing the initial wash with watered down lumiere paint. In this example I had dark green lumiere, then dropped in dark brown diluted dye reinker. It seems that when the lumiere dries it separates a bit into the base color plus gold and most of the gold collects at the veins, how cool is that?!
Well I hope you have enjoyed my little phototour, keep experimenting :)
Etha