What I’ve Been Up Too

Life has been very busy lately, which is why this newsletter has been quiet, but things have starting to calm down and I should now be able to get back to my regular schedule of "mostly monthly" newsletters. One of the things taking up my time were these two illustrations that I recently finished.

I'm pretty happy with how they came out and through the course of painting them I discovered that watercolor paper does go bad, but more on that later.

The other big thing that was taking up my time was a Color and Light webinar that I was putting on for my local SCBWI chapter. That is finally done and I think it went pretty well.

Why Watercolor Paper Goes Bad

So as I mentioned, I recently discovered that watercolor paper can go bad. Unfortunately for me I discovered this while in the process of painting a piece and because of the deadline I did not have time to start over. I just had to keep going and hope that I would be able to make it work. And I think it mostly did.

So what does it mean when I say my watercolor paper has gone bad? Well when you apply paint to it, it looks something like this:

When it should look something like this:

So what's happening?

It's not that the watercolor paper has gone bad, it's that the sizing that coats the paper has gone bad. Sizing is both a surface coating that is applied to watercolor paper as well as a kind of glue which gets added to the paper when it's being made.  It slows down the absorption time of water and paint on the paper. In other words it prevents the water and paint from getting completely absorbed into the paper, without it the paper will behave just like any other kind of paper when it gets wet. With time and/or improper storage the sizing can break down.

How do you check for it? When watercolor paper goes bad you might see any of the following:

• When you apply paint or water it sinks into the paper, sometimes penetrating to the other side.

• The paper is super absorbent, in other words the paint or water just sinks into the paper

• You see a lot more texture, lines and edge then what you are used too seeing

• You see a mottled, splotchy texture when you apply paint/water (like in the photo above).

• The colors of the paint look dull and flat

• You can't use wet into wet techniques.

• This is a good video that talks about what this looks like: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i0O8udIEtDI

What should you do if it happens to you?

• You can try applying a layer or two of Watercolor Ground so that you can reuse it as watercolor paper.

• Don't use it for watercolor, use it for pastel or drawing instead.

Hopefully that helps.

Until Next Time :)