Wednesday, December 12, 2012

wc paper experiment

When I unframed an old painting for rework I was surprised to find that I had painted on 140 lb Arches hot press watercolor paper. I'm not sure what I was thinking in choosing to work on that surface so I decided to try watercolor paper again. This time I used 140 lb Fabriano Classico cold press just because that is the first sheet of wc paper I came to in my flat file. The scene is from my Hometown Marshland photo shoot last weekend.

It was a challenge to paint with such minimal paper tooth. I left some areas lightly colored so the texture of the paper would show (see the enlarged section below). I'm not sure this painting will leave my studio but it was an interesting experiment.


4 comments:

  1. I've been doing a lot of colored pencil and using whatever paper is on hand. I am becoming pretty geeky about papers in the process. I have ordered some of Art Spectrum Colourfix Coated pastel paper because I saw some drawings done on that brand that were spectacular. It's interesting how much difference the paper makes- when I started paper was paper.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Some of my old friends who work in colored pencil are having great results with Ampersand Pastelbord. You might like it too. I'm so glad you have acquired a taste for good paper!

    ReplyDelete
  3. Barbara-
    VERY nice piece...even if done on watercolor paper. Did you do an underpainting before applying pastels?
    Best,
    Randall

    ReplyDelete
  4. No underpainting on this one but if I were to work on this paper again, I would plan ahead and put a watercolor underpainting down in all places where I didn't PLAN to leave the texture of the paper showing.

    ReplyDelete