Hey, I just wanted to leave a giant comment about paper. Man, I hope that is ok. Also, I wrote half the giant comment once already, and then it got swallowed by the sign-in process, so I hope I manage to get it written down ok...
Anyway, I find the moleskine paper for watercolours to be excessively hard to use. Harder than cartridge paper! I'm not actually sure that it's really watercolour paper, and after some recent reading I think it's actually mold-pressed paper. One clue for this is that it's not very absorbant, which leads to effects like in the blue stripe behind the head, where a watery stroke doesn't go into the page and the pigment dries in hard edges where the surface tension of the water dries first.
It'd be great to see your experiments with different types of paper! I'm mostly using Seawhites of Brighton notebooks, which are loads more absorbent than similar-looking Daler notebooks. Daler cartridge paper just seems to die when watercolour touches it. I'm also, very sparingly, using two notebooks from Roberson & Co, which I picked up in Cornelissen's in London. The paper in those is proper watercolour paper, and I was most surprised to see that I could add several layers of colour without the paper turning into a horrible smudge!
And that's me all done. Hope it wasn't too much of a bore!
Hi Pete, Interesting point. I haven't really given that much though to paper until recently. I guess i have been resisting buying 300gsm paper as I still feel that I'm still in the early stages of my conversion to watercolour. Saying that, I do believe in using decent quality stuff from the get-go. Oddly enough, I found an old spiral A3 pad of Longton watercolour paper behind some drawers, cut it up and made an a5 ish pad out of it. I have filled about 20 pages, so ill take a good look and investigate the differences between the two. I think i'll also take a look at the Roberson & Co pas you mention. I'm always up for a recommendation. With regards to paint though, I have been stripping back my palette to just Cerulean, Burnt Sienna and Yellow Ochre recently. Going on a crash diet for a while to keep me on my toes. What colours are you frequenting? Limited palette? Cheers, Dan
Hey, I just wanted to leave a giant comment about paper. Man, I hope that is ok. Also, I wrote half the giant comment once already, and then it got swallowed by the sign-in process, so I hope I manage to get it written down ok...
ReplyDeleteAnyway, I find the moleskine paper for watercolours to be excessively hard to use. Harder than cartridge paper! I'm not actually sure that it's really watercolour paper, and after some recent reading I think it's actually mold-pressed paper. One clue for this is that it's not very absorbant, which leads to effects like in the blue stripe behind the head, where a watery stroke doesn't go into the page and the pigment dries in hard edges where the surface tension of the water dries first.
It'd be great to see your experiments with different types of paper! I'm mostly using Seawhites of Brighton notebooks, which are loads more absorbent than similar-looking Daler notebooks. Daler cartridge paper just seems to die when watercolour touches it. I'm also, very sparingly, using two notebooks from Roberson & Co, which I picked up in Cornelissen's in London. The paper in those is proper watercolour paper, and I was most surprised to see that I could add several layers of colour without the paper turning into a horrible smudge!
And that's me all done. Hope it wasn't too much of a bore!
Hi Pete,
ReplyDeleteInteresting point. I haven't really given that much though to paper until recently. I guess i have been resisting buying 300gsm paper as I still feel that I'm still in the early stages of my conversion to watercolour. Saying that, I do believe in using decent quality stuff from the get-go. Oddly enough, I found an old spiral A3 pad of Longton watercolour paper behind some drawers, cut it up and made an a5 ish pad out of it. I have filled about 20 pages, so ill take a good look and investigate the differences between the two. I think i'll also take a look at the Roberson & Co pas you mention. I'm always up for a recommendation.
With regards to paint though, I have been stripping back my palette to just Cerulean, Burnt Sienna and Yellow Ochre recently. Going on a crash diet for a while to keep me on my toes. What colours are you frequenting? Limited palette?
Cheers,
Dan