{"id":4934,"date":"2019-08-30T16:45:29","date_gmt":"2019-08-30T20:45:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/bethemmott.com\/blog\/?p=4934"},"modified":"2019-08-30T16:57:43","modified_gmt":"2019-08-30T20:57:43","slug":"washing-paper","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bethemmott.com\/blog\/washing-paper\/","title":{"rendered":"Washing Paper!"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I was tearing some large sheets of Arches 300 lb. watercolor paper to work with next week and remembered a little sketch book I made with that paper several years ago. It\u2019s a simple accordion structure and I wanted to have it to sketch things in my garden. Wanted heavy paper so I could work on both sides of the accordion pages. I hadn\u2019t worked with paper that heavy and my watercolor didn\u2019t take to the paper very well. It made an interesting texture but wouldn\u2019t do what I wanted. I was busy and set it aside.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><a href=\"http:\/\/bethemmott.com\/blog\/extra\/images\/watercolor\/book.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" title=\"Accordion book with unwashed pages\" src=\"http:\/\/bethemmott.com\/blog\/extra\/images\/watercolor\/book.jpg\" alt=\"Image of Accordion Book\" width=\"400\" height=\"\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Today I remembered reading (John Pike\u2019s book, \u201cWatercolor&#8221; that had belonged to my mom) about heavy watercolor paper having a sizing on it that might be washed off, so\u2026 I washed my paper. Just a simple run through with slightly warm water and then gently sponged off with a clean soft sponge. When the water first hit the paper it beaded up like crazy but after the sponging, nothing! No rubbing or soaking, just a gentle sponging to remove the excess water. Then laid on paper towels to dry.<\/p>\n<p>Also did a quick test strip\u2014just rinsed and sponged half the strip. When dry I took a brush full of watercolor and swooshed over both washed and unwashed areas. On the blue sample I also did a dab of color on each side.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><a href=\"http:\/\/bethemmott.com\/blog\/extra\/images\/watercolor\/testStrip.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" title=\"Let side unwashed and right washed!\" src=\"http:\/\/bethemmott.com\/blog\/extra\/images\/watercolor\/testStrip.jpg\" alt=\"Image of washed paper test strips\" width=\"400\" height=\"\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Mystery solved! Now I need to rinse my book without making a mess or messing up the existing sketches. A job for another day. But I did wash my prepared papers today!<\/p>\n<p>Thought I\u2019d share this as others might run into the same thing. I\u2019ve studied watercolor formally years ago in school but then I used lighter weight paper that I stretched on a board. Since then I\u2019ve used water color blocks of about 140 lbs. as I mostly take them for quick sketching. Other than my early work I\u2019ve been mainly self taught in this media and missed this bit of the watercolor world! Always something&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I was tearing some large sheets of Arches 300 lb. watercolor paper to work with next week and remembered a little sketch book I made with that paper several years ago. It\u2019s a simple accordion structure and I wanted to have it to sketch things in my garden. Wanted heavy paper so I could work&#8230; <a href=\"https:\/\/bethemmott.com\/blog\/washing-paper\/\">Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[271,342,189],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4934","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-painting","category-sketchbooks","category-books"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bethemmott.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4934","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bethemmott.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bethemmott.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bethemmott.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bethemmott.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4934"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/bethemmott.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4934\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4940,"href":"https:\/\/bethemmott.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4934\/revisions\/4940"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bethemmott.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4934"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bethemmott.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4934"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bethemmott.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4934"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}