Art Deco Flowers on Watercolor Paper

6" x 9", Watercolour

Arches Text Wove

Arches Text Wove paper is a favorite with my calligraphy friends.  It feels about the same weight as the Arches MBM Ingres paper but I think it may be 100% cotton.  It performed beautifully using the same technique (laid on wet plexiglass without tape).

I wet the sky area first and dropped in Daniel Smith Opera Pink and Cobalt Teal Blue.  Then I drew the field with Sap Green and added water to wet this area.  I added French Ultramarine and Veridian at the horizon line, and some more opera pink and teal until I was happy with the saturation.  FUN, FUN, FUN!

Weathered Barn

Stonehenge 100% Cotton 140 lb.

This next test needed a bit of a sketch with a light pencil.  I did this on the paper while it was dry.  Next I wet the glass and laid the paper on top.  Although this paper was considerably heavier than the last one, it still stuck fine without tape.

This is also a wet on wet painting, worked in sections.  Once I stopped fussing with the drawing, it was a lot of fun to do.

The reference photograph was by Dana Critchlow from Paint My Photo.

Look Ma, No Tape!

Included in my paper stash was a small piece of Arches MBM Ingres 60 lb 75% cotton paper.  It seemed an ideal paper for my next experiment.

I wet the glass thoroughly and laid on the paper.  I didn't tape the paper because the water held it firmly in place.

First I wet the sky area and dropped in French Ultramarine.  I then moved into the foreground letting it bleed into the sky to create a middle ground.  After it was dry I added the trees.  I cheated on the highlights by using a white gel pen.

This paper was a lot of fun to work on.

Still Having Fun!

Opus Student Watercolour Paper

This series of watercolour paper tests seems to have morphed into tests with various methods of preventing paper buckling.  That's OK, though, I'm still having fun painting!  And I'm not worrying about how much paper I'm "wasting", so that's a good thing too.

I wet this paper on the reverse and taped it to the glass.  It worked well.  As I was doing some Internet research on this subject I found another method that I'll try next.

Persistent or Stupid?

Refusing to give up, I tried two more tests on Canson XL watercolour paper.  I washed the glass I have been using in case contaminants were my problem and I used more fresh water to wet the back surface of the paper.  The first painting I transferred from the glass as soon as it began sticking, but this time I noticed that the layers of the paper were actually starting to separate.

For the second one I prepared the paper in the same way but I taped it to a board instead of glass.  It worked absolutely fine with no sticking.

Just in case I had not left the paper on long enough, I took a very small scrap of XL, wet both sides, taped it to the glass and left it over night.  The paper stuck and separated.

Conclusion:  Paper production often changes over time.  My XL paper is a few years old, so other artists may not experience the same thing I did.   But I will not be using XL paper for painting with lots of water again. 

Another Canson XL Watercolour Test

After my last experience with this paper (see yesterday's post), I wondered what I might have done wrong.  I had learned this no-stretch method of preventing buckling from an artist who uses it with all kinds of paper, including Canson XL.   Had I left the paper taped to the glass too long?  Not long enough?

The next day was cooler and the humidity was lower.  With different weather and these questions in my mind I tried again.   After I finished painting I removed some tape and could tell that the paper was beginning to stick to the glass again.  I quickly removed it so that there was only some minor damage.  I transferred it to a board and pressed the tape down to continue drying.  This worked fine.

I still had a lot of fun painting, though, and enjoyed a change of subject!

Preventing Buckling

Opus Student Watercolour Paper

For the next test, I wet the back side of the paper and taped it to glass, in an attempt to stop the buckling.  (Paper buckles when it gets wet on one side only).  This worked really well and I had so much more fun when the paint didn't run into the valleys caused by buckling or over to the edges.  

This worked so well for this Opus cellulose paper that I wondered how the XL paper might perform.  It seemed to work while I was painting, but I was surprised that as the paper dried, it glued itself to the glass and wouldn't come off without tearing.  

Canson XL Watercolour Paper

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

The Rainforest

Much of my art is inspired by the luscious rainforest where I live, in British Columbia, Canada.

These were done following the restrictions from Lesson Four of the Find Your Joy taster course I did recently.  And, once again, I enjoyed myself immensely. 

Part of the fun was stumbling across these little collage pieces from my stash.

Find Your Joy - Lesson Four

These were all done as part of the free taster course Find Your Joy with the wonderful artist and teacher Louise Fletcher.

This lesson was about limitations - there were instructions about which media to use in which order.

I enjoyed this lesson immensely.  Knowing that I was going to make four pieces freed me up to experiment and make mistakes.  I can see myself coming back to this exercise again and again.

Changing Things Up

Lesson Two in Find Your Joy was about trying something new.  We were to use new tools and colours we don't normally use on a familiar subject.  "Notice what you enjoy and what you don't", Louise instructed.

I used my 2 least favorite colours, purple and orange, but couldn't resist adding ochre and grey. I used a fan brush and a flat brush.  (I usually use rounds).  I found a stick in my desk drawer with 2 different ends. 

I enjoyed everything about doing this, although the feeling was different than when I worked wet on wet in Lesson One.    I felt very calm and peaceful doing this.  (Lesson One was joyful and exuberant.) 

I'm usually impatient and uninterested with this level of detail, but I found the fan brush fascinating and fun.  And I wanted to make tick marks with the stick over and over. It was all like some kind of meditation.  

I even enjoyed the colours.  I had to dive into a set of pan watercolors to find an orange and a purple, but these colours might find their way onto my shopping list.  If I'm paying attention to what I enjoy and what I don't, I would have to say that I don't enjoy mixing large quantities of paint colours.  I never mix enough and then it is hard to match.

Loose Sheet Journaling

My Town, Watercolour

This is another "intuitive painting", done on watercolour paper.  

I'm trying out what Roz Stendahl calls "loose sheet journaling".  Sometimes loose sheets are just easier to work on than in a book, or sometimes there is a loose sheet of paper that you just have to try RIGHT NOW.  Inspiration is like that.  Sometimes Roz uses loose sheets or cards for a special project and makes a slip case of some sort to hold them all when the project is finished.

I have a couple of other reasons for trying this out.  Occasionally someone will see something that I've done and will want to own it.  Or, I may want to do something else with the piece (turn it into artist trading cards or bookmarks, for example).  These things are all difficult if I've done the work in a journal.  So, for work I do on watercolour paper, I'm trying this approach for awhile.  Once I've accumulated a stack of loose pages, I may bind them using my Bind it All.  I did that once with the Index Card A Day project.