"Where is my Gondola? " ready to be varnished

"Where is my Gondola" is ready to be signed and varnished. It's a 14" X 14" watercolor on paper glued to a 1 inch cradled wood panel. I know it's terribly busy, but Venice is terribly busy:-) I had been looking at the photograph of that scene since I took it in April 2010 and really wanted to paint it. I really thought that its complexity was way beyond my skills...nevertheless, I wanted to attempt painting it.  What attracted me so? The beautiful lantern, the gondolas with their wonderful blue covers, the colors, the multitude of poles in the water...well, it's Venice:-)

Please let me know what you think.
Enjoy the rest of the weekend!

Experimenting with Soft Press Paper - Part II

I have played some more wiith the Fabriano's 140 lb SP paper.
In completing the  Gondola sketch  I observed the following:

• Removing masking over painted areas also removes the paint. This is the downside of the fact that this paper allows for such easy lifting techniques.
• In the same way, the smallest addition of water to a painted area will immediately disturb this first layer.
• I tried an automatic eraser on this paper and was pleased to see that it did lift out paint without any apparent impact on the paper: this is a good way to add highlights in small ares.
• The colors seem to remain more vivid than on the cold press paper. This picture was taken with a flash inside - so the colors are not true.

In conclusion, I will certainly use this paper again. I now know that if I use masking, it has to be to retain whites and not to protect already painted areas. My next experiment with this paper will probably be combined with my attempt to develop my floral painting skills.

As you can see, I am still procrastinating before starting a larger, more demanding painting:-)

Have a great week!

Experimenting with Fabriano's Soft Press watercolor paper

I am continuing my experiments with various watercolor papers. This time, I have tried Fabriano's Soft Press 140lb paper. I think this is going to be a winner!

Fabriano states that the soft press is somewhere between its hot press and its cold pressed paper. I wanted to try it out for myself with a quick sketch. I started the most typical Venetian scene possible: gondolas facing San Giorgio's. I may or may not complete this small  5"X 7" painting, but I am ready to share the following observations :

The soft press paper:

• has a texture similar to most CP papers: in other words, it is not as slick as most Hot Press. You don't have the impression of being on a skating rink.
• allows for extremely easy lifting of paints.  For example, on the main gondola cover, most of the highlights were achieved by lifting of paint, either while wet or once it had dried.  I loved that feature of this paper. This probably makes the paper closer to HP than CP. 
• should be ideal for florals
• is probably not the best for texture , although this is only an assumption on my part since I have not yet tried to achieve any special texture effects on this paper. Any comments about this?
• is a lot more economical in Ottawa, Canada than any of the Arches paper ( almost half the cost of the 140 lb CP Arches).

I really enjoyed working on this paper and this is definitely a paper that I will try again.

I would be very interested in reading comments from those of you who have painted on this Fabriano 140 lb Soft Press paper.