Dog Project Watercolour - Part 2 - Paper Preparation

For Dog Project, I wanted to use a good quality heavy paper - but I didn't want to have to order something in that I couldn't buy from my local art store - they have the Bockingford range of loose imperial watercolour paper sheets. I went with the 425gsm 'rough' variety as I do enjoy rough paper. I cut it down myself using a steel ruler and a knife that I'd wiped the oil from first. I cut it to an 8" × 10" sheet and then stretched it - I'm not going to bother doing a video on how to stretch paper as Lindsay The Frugal Crafter (who is a great inspiration and does some really cool stuff) has a really useful video on stretching paper already and you can just follow that:


I stretched the paper on my masonite drawing board using a gummed tape brand I'd not tried before - Loxley Gumstick Handy Artist Gummed Tape, which worked really well and was pretty well-priced (about £5) in my local art store. I then left it in my airing cupboard for 5h to dry really thoroughly.

I took the same photo of Dog that I made a canvas transfer of back in January (I'll do a video on that method at some point) and printed it with my laserprinter in black and white onto acetate so that I could focus on just the main areas of light and shadow and kind of not get bogged down in detail too soon. I copied it by hand onto the Bockingford 425gsm paper using a Daler Rowney Simply Sketching 2B Pencil. 

Once I had Dog fully drawn out, I decided that as I wanted to apply a very loose wash, I needed to mask out Dog so that he stayed white, given he is going to be pretty pale in colour, so I painted him with Winsor & Newton Art Masking Fluid using a Daler and Rowney Simply Gold Taklon 1/2" Angle Shader, which I got as part of a Daler Rowney Simply Gold Taklon Brush Zip Case (if sets are discounted, I always pick them up as they're a good way to get a range of basic brushed quickly - the Simply Gold Taklon range are great for acrylics and are very affordable - but I would not use them for watercolour or oils) - it took me about 10 minutes to paint him completely, at which point I left him overnight to dry.