Preparing the paper

Photo By **ANNE via flickr.com

For the longest time (years!) I managed to avoid the messy quandary of how best to hold down your paper onto a board while you slosh your paint and water all over it to create your masterpiece watercolor. How little I knew of how much trouble I had avoided all those years. I even for a fleeting moment wish I could crawl back into the watercolor block box and never come out again. However right now I am experiencing the incredible breadth of a huge white piece of paper before me and a nice long project I can sink my teeth into for a while. And I think I am in love. One obvious big benefit is I get to do odd shapes which I have been longing to do.

So if you outgrow watercolor blocks (300lb don’t commonly get very big, and they get unwieldy…hmm…then so do boards) or are just sick enough to just want to start out by strapping on watercolor paper onto boards (and I am not even going into soaking the paper since I hear if you work with 300lb you can avoid that mess) than two main questions arise:

What technique will I use (paste, gum tape, bulldog clamps or staples)? If only bull dog clamps solved everything. Since you may not always be working on a drawing board that is the size of the paper you want to use. Even though I haven’t yet (and I will) tried bulldog clamps, it is obvious more exploring has to happen. For another option I found an article in handprint.com’s description. He uses 1/2 inch staples through Popsicle sticks into a Daniel Smith applewood board. I just found out gum tape creates a horrible mess! I am going to go for the popsicle sticks and staples method now. I am a little concerned about the board and how heavy and bulky it will be. I would like to try DickBlick’s incredible board, what should I do? Ok I decided on trying the dickblick wood board I already own and then if necessary resorting to Daniel Smith’s and to save the hassle of the windy un-informational website, it is item #285490002 and ph. (800) 426-7923.

Will I cut the mat board for and frame my own? Pre-cut mats don’t commonly get very big. I spoke to mat cutter company Alto and decided the Alto 4501 is the best way to go.

A later update 7/21/8:
Now I think I have decided buying a staple gun and using popsicle sticks and staple holes and a heavy drawing board all might be too much. I like to yank up the board and turn it too often. Maybe I will use clamps and gum paper in whatever combo works and all on a lighter weight board.

Watercolor Palette

watercolor by Jeanne Dobie, author of the most excellent watercolor instruction book “Making Color Sing”

Surface

White porcelain or white metal are my favorite surfaces to mix on because they don’t stain and the whiteness helps you see what color is there. Plastic watercolor palettes will stain with certain pigments.

Size and Shape

How big is your working space?
How big are your paintings?
How many colors do you work with?
How much do you mix them?

For me my workspace is not large and neither are my paintings (9 x 11 and smaller). I like to have about 10-20 colors handy on the same palette.

Recently I have enjoyed using half pans in a metal white enameled paint box. It is very portable and takes up little space.

Also a huge favorite when I am working at a desk is a large porcelain palette that can slide under an easel partly. It is hard to find a nice wooden watercolor easel that has a lift (2″-4″) just enough that you can work like that. That is surprising since no matter what your media it seems obvious you would frequently like some room to move stuff under the easel and out of the way for a moment.

Third I have had lots of fun working with individual flat bottomed square dishes found at Crate and Barrel Square Dish. 2.5 oz.; 3″ sq.
SKU 174998. The author of Handprint likes to store his paints in them. They are stackable.

Paint Choice

What colors do you want there? That question can get pretty interesting and you can spend lots of time making that decision, exploring color and pigment capabilities. Time for color studies pays off later. The more I wanted some answers the more complexity I discovered and thanks to handprint.com I got answers and have been very pleased with my resulting decisions of using any of the quinacridone Daniel Smith colors and any of their paints by the way are most of all the best quality for long lasting and brilliant pigments and combinations. M.Graham also has among the best quality and is significantly cheaper and that is what I primarily use.

New Studio and Media

by Joseph Chiang

So excited that for the first time in my life there is a room devoted to place various art supplies, easels, papers, and a couple good sized work tables. We just moved to this house so it is all yet to be seen what really works. Once set up my hope is to get some of my work onto this blog.

For now I will just mention some of the media I will have all at once at my fingertips. Some of my best work is multimedia. For example putting pastel over a watercolor. I have found watercolor pencils to be a real drag. I thought oh I will do a sketch of subject with a watercolor pencil before painting then discovered the color from the pencil line exploded onto the page creating an unwanted additional color and chaos. I really had to start over. Do you use watercolor pencils? For what?

For years I used to do a lot with oil craypas, had a lot of fun with it until I found quality watercolors can be very brilliant colors too. I got sick of mashing my fingers into the oil on the page to get what I wanted. The flow of watercolor, its gentleness is very attractive to me.

So I first switched from craypas to a watercolor crayon which I had less fun with so far since it tends to create a rough look to a piece. I really like working on hot pressed paper to get the smoothest paper. With hot pressed you get to pick every spot you want the color to go or not go. With rougher cold pressed the rough texture leaves “holes” of white that I may or may not have chosen and it is hard to fill them in, I just don’t see how people work with that and really cold pressed seems to sell faster since that is what most stores have in abundance.

Then there was the ink exploration. I really love the way an ink line, especially a thin to thick painted line, sits beside bright white space on the page. There is so much clarity and confidence and certainty about it, it is almost like math. Here is the answer, no ifs ands or buts. It takes a little bit of courage or on-ness, where you just know you are on to work in it. To grab up a pen and just take off on a blank sheet and do it well is empowering. The result feels chiseled in with some sense of age and history. And when you shine the light on the page, the beauty of the contrast of the lines hold up to scrutiny. However there is much less play, it is a one shot deal, your in and your out. With watercolor you can pick up pigment, do many layers, come back again and again for hours and the painting just keeps getting better. With an ink drawing either you got it right or you didn’t and it is done.

Working with charcoal and water I have had a little fun and feel like I could explore more.

The changing, limitless color possibilities and the blooming and flowing of watercolor is still my favorite media.

Lineless

Watercolorists can get it so they are creating a photographic image, well whatever you want to do it is great and it seems it changes, what I want to mention here is how line-less watercolor lends itself to being.

A living fluid motion from one thing to another.

No lines, no start or end, no limits, everything is a part of everything else, the change is fluid and the being just moves from one thing to another.

Watercolor seems to have a life on the page and that life is beyond your limitations of it. You can work in wet and let go of control, so much need to control…and become free. Then you realize sometimes the color and water and you (moving the drawing board around maybe to direct the flow with gravity and movement) all had good input. It was not just a top down management, hierarchical style, you found getting input from the many was more fruitful. And the paint landed where it did and you may fret and you may be glad and you may rework, it is all there.

First Post

Hurray! I am here. A place to post discoveries, favorites and talk about the experience that goes beyond the material and what brings me here in the first place to this most difficult (really) media.

And here is where I am going so look out. This blog is all about watercolor. The pleasure, the joy of it and the trouble of it, this hobby I have finally claimed after all these years of trying and deciding it was just too much and backing away and then as though watercolor were knocking on my door, knock knock knock – I once again open the door, at last I surrendered and said look for better or worse this habit is not going away I may as well jump in a get wet. About a year ago handprint.com jettisoned me forward and past the intimidation of color and paint choices. Peggy taught me the brilliance of multi-layering patiently…well lets just say it has been a very long journey full of many great teachers (I mean authors, actually I never knew any watercolorists at all-too bad for me!) starting in High school, where one of my best friends (from Paris) moved back many of the barriers we set for ourselves.

If this exploration sounds like fun to you, great join the ride, feel free to subscribe, then you will get an email with my post whenever I make one (no spam) and easy to unsubscribe.