Today’s watercolor experiment:

I decided to let watercolors be watercolors today. I also listened to the paper.

I use a fairly heavy (140 pound) watercolor paper that comes in a block. This is a stack of paper glued to a thick cardboard backing on all four sides. This makes it impossible for the paper to curl up after being soaked with water, which is precisely what happens when one applies a wash of pigments.

Although my paper doesn’t curl at the edges when flooded, it does react.

I used earth tone pigments for the initial washes. Usually, earth tone pigments are very heavy and grainy but today I used red and yellow transparent iron oxides (from M. Graham). As the saturated paper dried, the paper buckled in an interesting pattern. I highlighted these areas by adding a more saturated yellow.

After the paper dried completely, I used Terra Rosa an opaque iron oxide pigment (also from M. Graham) to accentuate the shapes caused by the paper warps, and to provide bounding edges to the composition.  Terra Rosa is a butter-smooth pigment that looks like velvet when dry. It makes a nice contrast to the amorphous, transparent earth tone washes.

Ambiguous Form
9″x12″ 140# Cold Pressed Watercolor Block

I haven’t decided which orientation I prefer for this piece. It works in both landscape and portrait formats.