Blog

Have been painting on a watercolour paper called Bao Hung that I ordered from China. It is pretty good, comes in rough Cold Press, regular Cold Press and Hot Press. The paper size from Ali Express is very limited and too small. Tao Bao offers more sizes. I don't understand why. Probably shipping is too expensive for larger size paper and hence the limited choice. The paper if ordered from Hong Kong, works out to be much cheaper than Arches of course. But you will have to be there to bring it back to Canada where I am.

I have been playing with filming my painting process with my cell phone. I used a selfie stick and attached it to a tripod to have the cell phone above my painting. I charged my cell phone while filming as battery drains very quickly when taking videos. I turned off the volume so the video did not catch any background noise. I took clips of max 5 mins each and used Ott light to illuminate to reflect the true colours. I edit the clips using Video editor that comes with Microsoft Windows 10. It is not as sophisticated as the Windows Media Player (old version) but good enough for turning around videos, adding music and speeding up if needed. Check out my Youtube channel. Here is my latest video - a 10 mins one showing how I painted a cardinal : https://youtu.be/QpTUwUYJC9s

It was a lot of fun changing the colours of my original painting using an APP "Pencil Sketch" . I was playing with it to create a HOLE IN ONE card for my friend.

Have used watercolour ground from De Serres on canvas to paint watercolour. Their stuff is not as smooth as that produced by Daniel Smith and is good to paint rocks etc. Pre-treated surface is less receptive to watercolour and glazing has to be applied when one layer is fully dry, otherwise the colour will spread outside the boundary you want it to remain.

Having experimented painting on watercolour grounded canvas and watercolour grounded panels, I prefer the latter. It is easier to apply the ground onto panel as it is flatter and can carry the ground more evenly. (My Welcome Spring painting of tulips was done that way). All in all, I still prefer painting on paper wrapped around canvas (see my Living Water #2 painting)

Have lately tried to paint on watercolour ground on Board. Finished 2 paintings using that method and found it very enjoyable and lots of fun. I used a lot of spray, and added layers on layers. It was easy to change, unlike painting on paper. The extremely flat surface also gives lots of freedom. See my two paintings done that way: Welcome Spring 1 & 2