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Looking at Canson Heritage Watercolor Paper
This past fall I purchased a block of 140 lb. hot press Canson Heritage Watercolor paper. It is a 100 percent cotton paper with vegetable sizing. (Yep, I am not happy about the sizing, but there you have it.) Since then I’ve been working on it to complete a project. I haven’t posted sketches from […]
Testing Yarka Watercolors
Last fall I was in Wet Paint and they had some sets of Yarka Watercolors for sale. I purchased two sets. One was a standard set of colors that I bought for a young friend as a gift. The other set, “High Chroma” (HC) was for me to experiment with. They were in fun square […]
Studying Other Artists, Or Dealing with a Plateau in Artistic Development
Recently one of my Drawing Practice students mentioned that she’d been discouraged to see the “before” and “after” artwork someone had posted on Facebook. Some of the artists included showed art from childhood and adulthood. Others posted work that was only a couple of years apart, yet showed great development of representational facility. All were […]
Greens, Grays, and Canson Heritage Watercolor Paper
Tuesday I met up with a couple artist friends for lunch and afterwards we trekked across the street to Wet Paint, each with some art supply on our list. For me I was picking up some white gouache to test. Funny how that goes, I ended up sorting my paints when I got home and […]
Daniel Smith Pan Watercolor Palette: A Quick Video Look
I have posted a review of the new Daniel Smith Pan Watercolor palette on YouTube. (Use the link if the imbedded video doesn’t work.) In case you can’t get your hands on one of these palette boxes before making a decision to purchase it I wanted to give you a closer look. In the video I […]
Practice: Thinking about Ricky Jay
Writer, historian, magician, performer, actor, Ricky Jay died on Saturday, November 24, at the age of 72. While a man who knew how to run all the classic short and long cons might not seem the ideal role model you need to take a closer look. Here is someone who spent his life observing […]
The Blackwing Notebook
Sometimes I simply can’t help myself when I find lined notebook paper. A few months ago I was in Wet Paint and they had small notebooks by Blackwing (the company that makes the pencils with the rectangular erasers—I use the soft lead version to do my daily sudoku). The notebook is about 3.5 x 5.5 […]
In Context—Just for the Fun of Feeling the Paper
I was having so much fun with this sketch on real watercolor paper, that I forgot to write down the date and time on the page! That’s a lot of fun. I started working late one night in one of the 9 x 11 inch watercolor journals I bound last fall. It contains Fabriano Artistico […]
A Quick Review of the Leda Art Supply Sketchbook
Why a quick review of the Leda Art Supply Sketchbook? Specifically the “Baby Leda Pocket Sketchbook” which is what I purchased, but seems to be the same paper and construction as the larger version? The paper didn’t work out for me at all. It took three quick sketches to learn what I needed about this […]
Working on Hahnemühle’s Harmony Watercolor Paper
I’m a hot press paper person. It’s plain and simple. Sure on textured papers if you use the brush pen the line gets all broken up in interesting ways. Great. I love that. But I love the smooth feel of the brush pen moving along smooth, plate smooth paper more. Much more. One of the […]