Big beautiful cumulus

02/21/12, 2 pm, looking south

These lovely cumulus clouds drifted over central Virginia in the afternoon punctuated by glimpses of cerulean and ultramarine blue sky. This sky feels almost like a summer sky. It has all the makings, tall cumulus with violet shadows, pure blues in the sky, and crisp white cloud tops. What it doesn't have (thank goodness!) is the heat and humidity.


The pebbly texture in the blue in the lower right is the rough watercolor paper. Little pools of pigment dry in the rough paper to create the effect. I know I've said this before but I really like rough watercolor paper.

On the rough

Lovely big cumulus clouds wafting through Virginia today. These were painted facing east at about 2 pm with the wind lightly blowing southeast.


This watercolor is painted on Arches rough watercolor block. If you look at the blue sky above the middle white cloud you can see some characteristic puddling of the blue pigment in a kind of pebbled texture. Also a feature of painting on rough paper is the broken brush stroke where the brush hair bounces over the uneven surface. An example of this is in the  edge of the right-most white cloud on the border of the blue sky.

Cold press, hot press and rough?

I paint on Arches French watercolor paper which has great surface quality and is very durable. One can scrub, rub, erase, load it with water and pigment and still it survives and looks great.


Watercolor paper is available in three surface textures: hot press, cold press and rough. I never paint on hot press paper. It has been rolled smooth and is excellent for detailed work which isn't what I am interested in. 


I like both cold press and rough paper. The surface texture of cold press preserves the tooth that is smoothed flat in hot press paper. This surface texture creates small puddles of pigment and allows a more broken area of color on the sheet. The rough texture is my favorite because of the uneven surface which creates all kinds of opportunities for happenstance color interactions. After the painting has dried, ridges of color collect around puddles and form fascinating little bits of paint.


This sunset was painted yesterday on cold press paper about 8:20 pm facing west with low stratus clouds looking almost like distant mountains. For contrast, I'll use rough for the next painting.