Watercolour Papers For Stamping 1: Why, What and How

This post is really just a pre-amble to some product comparisons I've done this weekend - they will be posted over the next few weeks in 4 parts.

A lot of cardmakers and papercrafters use watercolour paper to make card-fronts or to create special effects. Two of my favourite cardmakers are Kristina Werner and Jennifer McGuire, both of whom do beautiful watercolour effects - either with 'proper' watercolour paint or using inks or liquid-watercolours and so on. I've noticed that a lot of cardmakers on YouTube, for example, use what I would called 'craft watercolour paper' (craft, not kraft!) - this is often very expensive for what it is and is nothing more than student-quality 100% woodpulp watercolour paper - usually hot-press or a very low-texture cold-press. Now, I'm not going to waste my professional-quality £30-per-block watercolour paper for cards or similar, so I always  have a stash of student-grade paper that I buy when it's on offer and I use it for making colour-charts (screw the whole "make them on the paper you use" thing - I have a master set on cheap paper and then before painting something 'proper', I paint swatches on the edges of the paper, outside of the picture area) - I use the same paper for cards, for example, if I need a watercolour panel. These kinds of techniques range from the beautiful hand-lettering that Kristina is famous for to no-line-colouring (ditto) and the watercolour painting of stamped images.

The lovely, generous and friendly people at St Cuthbert's Mill located in the county of Somerset (where my mother's father's family were from), here in the United Kingdom just a few months ago sent me not only a few dozen Imperial sheets (30 × 22" or 76.2 × 55.9cm) of beautiful Bockingford cold-press (my main go-to paper), but also a block of Saunders Waterford cold-press High-White (an ultra-white) to try out and maybe 50 or so small swatches of all the different papers, textures and weights so that I could try them all out and share the results with you!

Amidst the samples was a non-watercolour-paper, to my surprise! Somerset Printmaking Paper - this is a 100% cotton, archival-quality printmaking paper - they sent me a piece of 300gsm Textured White, which feels a bit like a cold-press watercolour paper and reminds me a lot of Saunders Waterford in terms of how the surface feels - that is also a 100% cotton paper. At first I was like "but I don't do printmaking - I don't need this!" but then earlier this week, I had a kind of epiphany - what is rubber-stamping? PRINTMAKING!

So, whilst Somerset Printmaking Paper is NOT cheap if you buy it by the 25-sheet-pack (it's about the same price as Bockingford when it's on a per-sheet basis at Imperial size - which is actually pretty economical), I wanted to see how it performed for stamping and maybe watercolouring of stamped images...but, being a scientist, I can't just look at a single paper and review it - oh no - I had to do a proper comparison! 

The products I decided to compare are as follows - I opted to use hot-press watercolour paper since it stamps better as a rule, owing to the flat surface:

Somerset Printmaking Paper (SCM) - 300gsm, Textured, White.
[100% cotton; internally sized; long grain; 88% TAPPI]
Bockingford Watercolour Paper (SCM) - 300gsm, Hot Press, White.
[100% bleached chemical pulp; internally sized; short grain; 89% TAPPI]
Saunders Waterford Watercolour Paper (SCM) - 190gsm; Hot Press, White.
[100% cotton; internally sized + gelatine surface sized; long grain; 76% TAPPI]
Saunders Waterford Watercolour Paper (SCM) - 190gm; Hot Press; High White.
[100% cotton; internally sized + gelatine surface sized; long grain; 89% TAPPI]
Bristol Board (D&R) - 250gsm; Plate Finish; White.
[unknown composition]
Premium Smooth Card (HC) - 300gsm; Smooth Finish; White.
[unknown composition]

SCM = St Cuthbert's Mill; D&R = Daler & Rowney; HC = Hobbycraft
TAPPI = Technical Association of the Pulp and Paper Industry [Brightness Scale]

DECLARATION St Cuthbert's Mill provided me with samples of their papers for review - all other items used in this review I bought myself. Note when items are provided to me for review, I am not obligated to give a good review and my agreement with companies is that I must be able to give a 100% honest review.

Other Materials Used:

Stamps
Craft Asylum "Home Sweet Home" photopolymer stamp set
Stampers Anonymous Tim Holtz Collection "Papillon CMS 106" red rubber stamp set.
Brushes and Tools
Winsor & Newton kolinsky sable artist's brush - Size 0 Round.
Papermania acrylic stamp block - 4.00 × 5.25".
Alcohol Markers
Promarker - Cool Grey 2 (CG2) 
Promarker - Cool Grey 3 (CG3)
Promarker - Cool Grey 4 (CG4)
Promarker - Shale (R215)
Promarker - Slate (V715)
Promarker - Sunflower (Y156)
Dye Ink
Tsukineko Memento dye ink - "Rich Cocoa ".
Ranger Archival dye ink - "Jet Black ".
Pigment Ink
Tsukineko VersaFine fine-grade pigment ink - "Onyx Black ".
Watermark Ink*
Tsukineko VersaMark watermarking ink.
(* NB: only used to pre-prime photopolymer stamps - glycerol can be used instead)
Specialist Inks
Ranger Distress Ink - "Iced Spruce ".
Ranger Distress Ink - "Hickory Smoke ".
Ranger Distress Ink - "Barn Door ".
Ranger Distress Ink - "Gathered Twigs ".
Ranger Distress Ink - "Fossilized Amber ".

[...to be continued...]

Storage: Watercolour Tubes

Increasingly, I want to use paint straight from the tube to get a more intense effect, so I need to find tubes easily - the tubes I threw into a drawer...and the writing is so small on them, it was taking ages! I temporarily had them sorted by colour in a plastic tray but I had too many paints...then I stumbled on this in Tiger (Flying Tiger in the USA - a wonderful Danish chain) and it turned out to be PERFECT! It is their Opbevarginsbokse (Storage Boxes), and comprises 3 tiered boxes that can be stacked in any order that lock together, plus a lid. Each box has 6 sections, so there's 18 sections in all. The sections are EXACTLY the right size for 5mL paint tubes! This might also work for people who can get to a Tiger shop :O)

My Winsor & Newton Artist's Watercolours are coded with numbers than ultimately run from 001 to 799 at present - though only about 100 are ever in use at a time, I have discontinued colours from 1979 to 2002, so those numbers I do need to consider. I split the top layer into 3 rows - "000", "100", "200" and each row has two sections e.g. "000-049" and "050 to 099". This allowed me to get all of them into the box with room to spare - there are two sections in the bottom layer free for something when the time comes.

View from above - showing the handled lid and the 6 sections of the top layer.

View from the front...yes I left the label on, I'm that much of a slattern.

The top layer from inside - all of these are Winsor & Newton Professional Watercolours but many different branding designs as I have paints from 1979 to present as I have a lot of discontinued old stock I got for £1 a tube this year.

The Svalbard Series

So, I've been painting a lot of botanicals lately for a meadow project I'm working on and they all involve many layers of glazing. Whilst they are drying, I've taken to doing sketches based on the aurora borealis - this has kind of now become a thing and it's had a lot of attention on Twitter so I'm now hashtagging them as the #svalbardseries - they are silhouettes based on actual Google Street View images from Svalbard, but with imaginary backgrounds. Here are some examples, thus far - two based around the town Longyearbyen and one more rural based near to a mining town. Important to note that St Cuthbert's Mill kindly gave me a block of Saunder's Waterford paper to review, gratis, and I've been suing it for these paintings and others to really test it out. It is in 140lb cold-press (CP/NOT) in their 'high-white' colour, which is a very pure, bright white.

Miner's Daughter, Ana, Meets Jörð's Daughter, Aurora

Watercolour on paper. Copyright (C) 2016, The Spindoctor. CC BY-SA-4.0.

Saunders Waterford 140lb "high white" cold-press paper.

Artist-grade paints by Winsor & Newton in Indigo, Prussian Blue, Aureolin, Phthalo Green YS and BS, Ultramarine Purple and Ivory Black.

This was originally going to be 'Gaia's daughter', but I figure Jörð is more appropriate. The miner is stood to the left of their house, his daughter is held in his arms.

Winter Night At Longyearbyen

Watercolour and gouache on paper. Copyright (C) 2016, The Spindoctor. CC BY-SA-4.0.

Saunders Waterford 140lb "high white" cold-press paper.

Artist-grade paints by Winsor & Newton in French Ultramarine, Aurora Yellow (discontinued, 1997), Dioxazine Violet, Phthalo Green YS and Ivory Black. Spattered with Designer's Gouache (Winsor & Newton) in Zinc White.

Reflecting the aurora in the snow on the ground worked out really nicely in the end. I did the spattering effect with one of those spattering brushes that looks like a bottle-brush and you turn the handle - makes for a lovely fine spray!

Winter Morning At Longyearbyen

Watercolour on paper. Copyright (C) 2016, The Spindoctor. CC BY-SA-4.0.

Saunders Waterford 140lb "high white" cold-press paper.

Artist-grade paints by Winsor & Newton in Hansa Yellow, Emerald (discontinued, 2002), Prussian Blue, Indigo, Ultramarine Violet and Ivory Black.

Don't be confused by the name at the bottom - that was me noting down what to paint next (i.e. the painting above this one!) but I was going to paint Norway - this was prior to deciding to stick to Svalbard.

Three Jar Inspiration

UPDATE 15th June 2016: I've made some worksheets for this technique and put them on my Downloads page to help start people off.

We all struggle with a lack of inspiration for painting regularly - personally I started using painting a small botanical each evening and posting them on Twitter under #bedtimebotanical a good motivation (please feel free to join me in that!), but there's another method I also use - I call it "three jar inspiration". If you use it, please tweet it or tag it on YouTube (etc) with #3jarspaint so we can share with one another our outcomes. I came up with this for myself as a means to force myself to use a wider range of mediums and to stretch my range of what I paint/draw - it has worked really well for that!

You need:
* Three jars of any kind.
* Paper (typing paper or scraps, 3 colours is ideal).

Label the jars, if you like - the should be labelled "What" "Style" and "How" - the "How" jar is actually optional. If you only paint in one medium e.g. watercolour and you don't want to use any other media, you can stick to just two jars.

In the "What" jar, put pieces of paper on which you have written a whole load of subjects for painting - these can be really specific like "The Sea", "A Banana", "Two Sheep", "A Beetle", or can be more figurative like "Playtime", "Laughter", "Deep Love", "Gaia's Might". You can use anything you like! If you like to use images for reference, you could swap this jar for a shoebox full of postcards or printed out images, for example. If you don't use reference photos - or perhaps want to start to get away from them - you can stick to using words on slips of paper and then only look up a reference photo when you really need it.

In the "Style" jar, put pieces of paper on which you have written a wide variety of styles, such as "Loose", "Abstract", "Impressionist", "Tudor", "Cubist", "Decalcomania" - they don't have to be specifically painting styles - you could use -  "Steampunk", "Vibrant", "Twisted", "Nightmare", "Stormy", "Dreamlike", "Utopia" - use your imagination! Or for a REAL challenge, put in some names of painters you admire! I've put in names of YouTubers I love as it helps me to try out their distinctive styles!

In the optional "How" jar, put pieces of paper on which you have written the different media you have to hand - put each one in a few times, obviously. "Charcoal", "Papercraft", "Cardmaking", "Mixed Media", "Art Journal", "Oil Pastel", "Alcohol Ink", "Stamping", "Pyrography", "Oil", "Gouache", "Alkyd", "Crayon", "Chalk", "Chalk Pastel", "Acrylic"...

How it works!
All you do is firstly decide when you want to paint/draw etc - for me, it's 2200h, so whatever time it is, find another time maybe 12-24h before which will be the time you use the jars. For me, that's 0600h. I get up and first thing, I grab a piece of paper from each jar - that tells me what I am producing at 2200h so I have all day to think up what or how I'm going to do this - you could be doing "Wasp, Steampunk, Papercraft" one day and "Seascape, Loose, Watercolour" the next - or if you use names of artists you could end up trying to mimic Leonid Afremov's oil painting style using decoupage to create a banana - in this way it REALLY stretches you as an artist!

Even if you only use two jars (or one jar and one shoebox), you are still challenged with doing watercolours (or whatever) of "sunset over Mount St Helens in Picasso style" or "tip of a ball-point pen in an art deco style" - that's a great challenge! Happy painting!

Radio Silence

I've been hellishly busy of late and had a period of illness too, so I'm quite behind on content. I've got a LOT of videos made that I need to edit and upload - some great product reviews of budget watercolours and acrylics, watercolour papers and inks, including the Tim Holtz Distress Ink Sprays and the Dyan Reaveley Dylusions Ink Sprays - comparing the two products. 

Hope to be back up to speed within the week!
TSD

Colour Translation: Kingfisher

Continuing sharing alternatives to the Turner watercolours for Lyndsay The Frugal Crafter's watercolour tutorials, this week she used the following colours from the Turner range, which is really hard to get hold of in the UK and the EU, so I've recommended some Winsor and Newton professional grade colours and Cotman student grade colours that should work in the same way. I've embedded her video below, for reference when looking through what I recommend. 

If you have set up a palette based on my recommended colours, even my standard Essential Palette (12 colours that make for easy mixing) pretty much covers this, but as I don't recommend Winsor Yellow or Permanent Sap Green in that collection, you would need to buy those as "add ons" - my Complete Palette still doesn't have Winsor Yellow in it - this is "Hansa Yellow" in many other sets, and it's a semi-transparent, staining warm yellow, so you could substitute it for New Gamboge and get similar effects, but I would recommend getting Winsor Yellow itself as it's a single-pigment colour whereas W&N New Gamboge has 2 pigments in, which means it won't mix in the same way and it's much easier to end up with muddy mixes that way.

If you're using the Cotman range, you'll find most of the same colour names translate over, except where noted. My Student Palette does cover most of them (and has links for buying them on Amazon UK, where they are dominantly sold below the RRP of £2.60 per tube) but per the above, you'd need to make some additions, which I've annotated below.

Yellow Ochre, PY43 Natural Yellow Iron Oxide
This is a pretty standard Yellow Ochre so anything with the same name in another brand is going to work.
Permanent Yellow, PY154 Benzamidazolone Yellow 154
This is 730 Winsor Yellow (Winsor and Newton). A lot of manufacturers use names like this - "[manufacturer name] Yellow" for this pigment, or "Hansa Yellow", of course. There is no Cotman alternative to this colour, so you would need to make do with Gamboge (Hue) as the only semi-transparent, staining warm yellow in that series, but just be mindful that it isn't a close match to what Lyndsay is painting with so your work will look different - it could be a good exercise in colour-theory and mixing though, to try and match her mixes in slightly different ways?
Burnt Sienna, PBr7 Brown Iron Oxide
Virtually all Burnt Sienna watercolours on the market use this pigment, so an easy alternative should be possible.
Ultramarine Blue, PB29 Ultramarine Blue
This, again, is pretty easy to match in virtually any series.
Phthalo Blue (RS), PB15 Phthalocyanine Blue RS
Ditto - this will be universal - but will have different names, for example, Winsor Blue (Red Shade) (Winsor and Newton) or Intense Blue (Cotman from Winsor and Newton).
Sap Green, PG36 Phthalocyanine Green YS and PY110 Isoindolinone Yellow.
This is totally just a convenience mix so you don't even need it! You can either just mix together a Phthalo Green YS (such as Winsor Green (Yellow Shade)) and a Permanent Gamboge (such as New Gamboge ) or an Irgazin Yellow to get a viable Sap Green yourself. If you use it a lot, pre-mix them wet and set into a palette and avoid buying it. Alternatively, you can buy a Permanent Sap Green . It's worth noting that Hooker's Green is the same two pigments in different ratios, so you can add a little yellow to it and make your own Sap Green that way too. Be wary of the Cotman version of Sap Green  as it contains a lot of opaque red in the form of PR101 - an iron oxide pigment - which is obviously going to give you unusual results and muddy mixes quite easily- if you use Cotman, I would recommend you use Hooker's Green Light here and add a bit of yellow or yellow ochre to it to match true Sap Green.

Enjoy painting this project - it's a really beautiful kingfisher (a bird I've only ever seen once in my life, sadly)!

Product Review: Sennelier Abstract Acrylic Paints

My local art stores only stock Daler and Rowney (which I like CRYLA and System 3 ranges of) and Pip Seymour (which I dislike - they have a nice range of earth colours but I dislike the almost jelly-like texture some of the colours have) acrylic paints - so when the local big-box store started selling Sennelier Abstract Acrylic Paints, I was intrigued. None of the colours were ones I really needed, but I don't have a neutral gold so I picked up a pack of 028 Iridescent Gold for a mere £2.00 - it was on sale and is normally £4.00 there, and on Amazon UK it is £7.63, so this was a pretty good saving! When I got to the checkout, I was given a tiny pack of 385 Primary Blue for free as a sample. When I did my test comparisons below, I had assumed this would be either a Process Blue (i.e. Cyan) or a neutral blue, like a Cobalt Blue (Hue) - so I used the latter (System 3) for comparison. When I read the package and realised it was a Phthalo Blue (PB15:3 Phthalocyanine Blue BGS), I thought that calling it "Primary Blue" was a bit stupid - every painter the world over knows Phthalo Blue would be called Phthalo Blue, right? I don't get why they didn't use the normal name. I used System 3 707 Rich Gold as the comparison for the Iridescent Gold as it was the only gold I had to hand.

Sennelier Abstract are sold in pouches rather than tubes and come in at 120mL (4 US fl. oz.; 4.2 UK fl. oz.) - so let's normalise that to a current Amazon UK price of £6.36/100mL. In comparison, System 3 707 Rich Gold is £5.52 for 150mL (5 US fl. oz.; 5.3 UK fl. oz.), which normalises to £4.60/100mL. CRYLA 707 Rich Gold is £9.25/75mL (2.5 US fl. oz.; 2.2 UK fl. oz.), which normalises to £12.33/100mL:

Normalised prices:
Sennelier Abstract 028 Iridescent Gold = £6.36/100mL.
Daler & Rowney System 3 707 Rich Gold = £4.60/100mL.
Daler & Rowney CRYLA 707 Rich Gold = £12.33/100mL.

That puts Sennelier Absract halfway between the two in terms of price. The paint coming in pouches intrigued me - not as easy to store as tubes I guess. The paint is marketed as a "heavy body" paint but to be honest, even just feeling it through the packaging, it's really not - it's a little heavier than System 3 Standard Body but nowhere near as thick as the Heavy Body or CRYLA versions.

So how do they look? I painted them onto Daler & Rowney System 3 Acrylic Paper with a dry Simply Golden Taklon 1" flat wash (one of my favourite ranges of acrylic brushes even though they are the cheapest things around!) to see how they came out. The advertised properties of the four paints are:

Sennelier Abstract 028 Iridescent Gold - PY3 + PBk7 (Hansa Yellow 10G + Lamp Black) on mica, lightfastness n.r. (not listed), transparent.
Daler & Rowney System 3 707 Rich Gold - PW6 + PR101 (Titanium White + Synthetic Iron Oxide Red) on mica, lightfastness ***, transparent.

Sennelier Abstract 385 Primary Blue - PB15:3 (Phthalocyanine Blue BGS). Lightfastness ***, semi-transparent.
Daler & Rowney System 3 110 Cobalt Blue (Hue) - PW6 + PB29 (Titanium White + Ultramarine Blue), lightfastness ***, opaque.

Top to bottom: Sennelier Abstract in Primary Blue and Iridescent Gold then Daler & Rowney System 3 in Cobalt Blue and Rich Gold.

So, my verdict on them. Firstly, the body really is not heavy body - they're very liquid and actually reminded me of Daler & Rowney Graduate Acrylic in that regard. The colour intensity is quite good and in the image above, I applied roughly equal blobs of each of the 4 paints - you can see the two blues have a similar pigment load, but the golds are a bit different - the Sennelier gold has clear patches of paper showing through - but the Daler & Rowney gold doesn't.

A close-up of Sennelier 028 Iridescent Gold - you can see clear patchiness where the pigment load just isn't as good and the tooth of the paper really shows through. It's advertised as being a transparent colour, so I would expect that to some degree, but not patchiness - that's not acceptable. The sparkle was pretty much as one would expect and the colour a nice neutral gold - I have no negatives I can say in those regards.

And now Sennelier 385 Primary Blue - the coverage is better here but it does seem thin in a few places - for a semi-transparent colour, that's kind of usual but I did feel it just didn't want to go as far on the page as the System 3 colours did.

Here is the Daler & Rowney System 3 707 Rich Gold (Imitation) for comparison - you can see much better coverage and even in a standard-body paint, there are clear brushmarks - a heavy-body paint should show those, which shows how totally not a heavy-body paint the Sennelier ones are. The coverage is good and even - there is no patchiness and whilst the texture of the tooth shows through, you can't physically see bare tooth.

And Daler & Rowney System 3 110 Cobalt Blue (Hue) - this still shows brush-marks like the above even though it's standard-body - there's a bit of thin, patchiness at the top left - where the tooth does show through - this is an opaque colour so it does fall down a bit on that regard but I think this is more a symptom of my brushwork as I threw this one down last of the 4 before getting something to eat!

Sennelier Abstract Heavy-Body Acrylic Paints

Packaging:

Looks: *******--- 7/10
Recyclableness: Not Known
Readability: ********** 10/10
Ease of use: ********** 10/10

Product:
Quality: ******---- 6/10 (it was pretty good in terms of the colours themselves and the pigments used, but as it wasn't heavy-body, I felt this was totally misleading - the patchy nature of the application compared to System 3 really let this paint down, too)
Value for Money: *****----- 5/10 There are better quality, true heavy-body acrylic paints with similar grade pigments available at a lower price - therefore I cannot consider this good value and the outright lie re: being heavy-body is not good at all.

OVERALL RATING: 4/10