Testing New Watercolor Papers from Hahnemühle!
I recently received a new paper to try out from Hahnemühle USA, the Harmony 140 lb. cold pressed block. The best way I know of to test new paper is to put it through all the paces -- heavy washes, lifting, masking fluid, and other forms of abuse that I inflict upon my paper in the course of creating a painting. Here's a step by step tutorial of my koi painting, and a review of the paper in the process.
The Harmony 140 lb CP watercolor block from Hahnemuehle. |
Next I painted my lightest values on the fish, the yellow colors. Notice my background wash is still wet -- I used a lot of water! |
And finally, this is my finished painting of the koi. |
The Harmony paper from Hahnemuehle responded beautifully, and held up perfectly despite my abusive painting techniques. It naturally buckled under my heavy washes, but then dried flat. I really gave it a workout and didn't expect it to perform as well as it did, and I was pleasantly surprised that the paper far exceeded all of my expectations. The texture is quite nice, slightly toothy. The paper is surface sized and the amount of sizing appears to be quite generous, giving that the amount of water that I used and the lifting techniques all worked quite well. The color is soft white -- not overly bright, but no hint of any yellow or cream color.
This paper is new, and is currently available at Art Materials Online. It will be available at other retailers soon.
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Labels: art instruction, art lesson, art supplies, art tutorial, artist materials, Hahnemuehle, koi, Painting Demonstration, painting lesson, water, watercolor, watercolor block, watercolor paper