Testing, Testing, 1-2-3

Stonehenge 100% Cotton

I recently began a series of watercolour paper tests.  I had a number of goals, which changed as I progressed.  My overall objective, however, was to see if I could get over my feeling that watercolour paper was too precious, too "good" for me.

My initial idea was to do a series of tests using the watercolour landscapes that we had done in Joanne Sharpe's Whims 2 class.  I had used a mixed media journal for the class, but thought that these would be more fun on watercolour paper with lots of water. 

I have quite a bit of watercolour paper in my stash, so I thought that it would also be useful to compare different kinds of paper.  Artist quality watercolour paper is 100% cotton rather than cellulose, and I wanted to compare the difference for myself.   

For the first two tests I taped the 140 lb. paper to a board and wet the paper in the sky area before adding paint.  The 100% cotton paper above definitely took more water without buckling than did the cellulose paper below.  The Canson paper buckled and the paint ran to the edges - not fun at all.  The Stonehenge cotton buckled a bit but at least the paint didn't run down to the edges.

Canson XL