Just a few of my "spacey" paintings. We'll see how they go and I might do some other paintings later on with different themes.
You can find her store here so please pop over and have a look.
Kaz has recently opened a store over on Folksy and I have let her post a few of my smaller pieces of artwork for sale alongside her handmade items.
Just a few of my "spacey" paintings. We'll see how they go and I might do some other paintings later on with different themes. You can find her store here so please pop over and have a look.
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.Watercolour paper can be quite expensive so why not reuse it as something else when you've finished with it? This is what I do with my old watercolour paintings that go wrong or I no longer want . In this case I made my own pastel grounds with 3 parts black gesso to 1 part fine pumice powder mixed together thoroughly. Tape the paper to a board with masking tape with a border of about 10 mm. Once you've taped the paper down just paint on the mixture so it completely covers the paper. At this stage the paper will probably cockle. .
I then dry the paint with a hair drier untill it's dry to the touch. At this stage the paint will form a skin holding in the moisture between the paper and the board. Just remove the paper from the board and turn it over. Re-tape the paper to the board surface down and dry out the under side with the hair drier or leave over night. Remove the paper from your board and place under something flat and heavy to stop the paper from warping. That's all there is to it. Just pack the paper in a plastic sleeve the use it as you need it. For other colours just use white gesso tinted with a little coloured acrylic paint. . There's been much hype about Golden Qor watercolour paints so I thought I'd give them a go!
The paper I used was Bockingford 425 g NOT surface. It's a while since I bought the paints and they were standing about in a pallet for ages. There seemed to be quite a bit of shrinkage in the pans and they dried out and cracked a bit but they lifted OK. Overall impression was that they are expensive and no better than any of the other paints that I use. I was asked recently to do a short watercolour demonstration at my local arts club where I am a member. Not something I am keen on doing but I agreed to do it. So last Monday I went armed with a selection of my work, done on various brands of watercolour paper and some samples for the members to try. We started by talking about the different papers and then I got them to paint a simple galaxy with a couple of moons. There were around 15 club members and they seemed to enjoy the demonstration which is good. These are the two pieces I started at the art club and finished later at home.
.I was lucky enough to spot a bargain online recently for Fabriano Artistico 200g watercolour paper. I don't really like using thin watercolour paper as it can be quite difficult to use but this was cheap enough to make it worth trying. I chose 2 surfaces; 1 cold pressed and the other hot pressed. I wanted to see how the papers performed without being stretched. My first example was done on the cold pressed. I used Lukas artists quality paints for this one. Although the paint went on really nicely with a good even flow the paper cockled quite badly.This made it a bit difficult to work . Fortunately the texture of the paper seemed to hold onto the paint stopping it from running into the gullies formed by the cockling. This picture shows the test sample after it had dried. Unexpectedly the paper dried quite flat showing a nice crisp finish far better than expected. The second sample was done on the hot pressed paper The paints used for this sample were Talens Van Gogh students paints. The first thing I noticed was that the cockling on the HP wasn't nearly as bad as on the CP paper. Unfortunately any benefits from this were negated owing to the fact that the surface of the paper was considerably harder. This stopped the paper from holding onto the paint allowing it to form puddles in the gullies of the paper. This meant I had to mop up excess paint with a dry brush. As can be seen from this image this paper also dried out relatively flat but owing to the lesser quality of the paints the final piece looked a bit wash out. .In conclusion.
I wouldn't recommend these papers to anyone without a reasonable level of experience as they can be difficult to master. I don't think working on them un-stretched is a realistic option but if attached to a paper stretcher I think they would provide a really nice surface to work on. For best results I would also stick to using artists quality paints. Footnote! Unless these papers are on offer it's hardly worthwhile buying them as the cost savings between 200g and 300g versions is negated due to the amount of waste created after removing the paintings from the stretchers. I've been looking for these paints for a long time but they are quite difficult to get here in the UK. Eventually I found a supplier online; Lawrence art supplies. Made in Australia these paints are claimed to be made from all lightfast pigments. They come in 10 ml tubes with a good selection of colours; unfortunately I think mine were part of a clearance sale. I generally squirt mine into pans as I don't have much space to store pallets all over the place. The first thing I noticed was an inconsistency with the texture of the paints. Some were quite runny whilst others were really gloopy and took some getting out of the tubes. Another issue I found was that they seemed to dry really quick in the pans with some of the paints cracking up like parched earth. On a positive note the dry paints seemed to lift OK after they had been wet. .Rather than doing swatches I decided to go straight into a small painting. A river scene from a photo by my pal Jayne Revell artist. I did this painting on Hahnemühle bamboo mixed media paper. This is not the easiest paper to use with watercolours. Generally speaking the paint went down well onto the wet paper. Although I did find some hard edges forming where different blues came into contact; this might have been down to the nature of the paper. The pigments in the paints seem quite strong so care must be taken if applying the paint straight to the paper. The paint flowed nicely but didn't seem to bloom like some other brands of paint. It also seemed to be nice and transparent and layered quite nicely. CONCLUSION. This paint might have a few issues but the final results are really nice. Just one other gripe was that some of the lids on the tubes broke too easily. Having said that they are well worth a try; there are a few bargains on Amazon at the moment. . Been doing a spot more testing of some new paints.
Just a wee tester piece of Rothesay castle. Mijello Gold watercolour paints on A4 size Clairefontaine Fontaine 300g HP paper. After seeing a lot of hype on Youtube about these paints I decided to buy a few tubes to try. First impressions not great. They are supposed to be transparent but have an almost opaque nature to them. Also the colours seem a bit bright and artificial. Some colours also seem to be made up of mixes of pigments making them hard to mix. I also had problems with the colours I mixed separating in the paper. For me a bit disappointing. Hello folks, sorry for not updating the blog for some time but things have been a bit quiet on the art front lately.
Not been doing much painting or drawing to be honest - due to various personal reasons. Have also been having a good sort out of all my supplies and clearing out some unwanted stuff. Have recently started doing a few doodles. This is a small piece using Shinhan watercolour paints on rough handmade watercolour paper. This paper was not as crisp as I would like. The image is taken from a photograph of somewhere in Australia taken by a friend. Having tried various ways of stretching my watercolour paper to avoid cockling I've come to the conclusion that most of them are a complete waste of time.
Eventually I went for the paper stretcher. It seemed to be the better of all the solutions. Although the paper dries dead flat after stretching it doesn't stay flat whilst painting on it. Once the paper was applied to the stretcher and dried over night it pulled really taught and flat. Unfortunately once a wash was applied it absorbed the water and began to cockle again. I've tried it with both 300g and 190g paper. Althought the 300g tends to hold its shape better it still cockles. Solution! Do smaller paintings or buy thicker paper. It's the only way to solve the cockling issue. Incidentally, paper stretchers aren't cheap. .I bought a sample pack of 3 small sheets of Two Rivers watercolour paper from Jackson's Art to try out. I used 3 different brands of paint and ink to see how it performed. The first sample was Derwent Inktense. The colours went on nice but seemed to be a little dull and flat. The colour lifted quite well whilst wet but permanent once dry. I found them to be a bit muddy too. Not dissimilar to lesser quality watercolour paints. The second sample was done with Daniel Smith's Primatek paints. These aren't easy to use anyway but also looked a bit muddy once dry. They also tended to lift a bit too easy. I had to be careful whilst layering them. Not a finish I particularly liked;although that might be as much the paint as the paper. The third sample was done with Jackson's own artists watercolour paints. These performed quite well. They layered OK, they lifted OK and the finish was nice and crisp. One down side for all 3 samples was a tendency for the surface of the paper to lift away. This left little bobbly bits which were quite a nuisance.
Having said that the final results were nice but the paper was a bit too expensive for my liking. Especially when compared to other quality brands that are available at lesser cost. |
AuthorMe - Terry Molloy. I paint for pleasure not profit! Archives
June 2020
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