TIM BAKER

Paper is everything in watercolour, well paper and paint. I’ve always used good artist-quality paint since almost my first work posted here (currently Winsor & Newton, Lukas, Sennelier and Schmincke) but paper I have avoided because of the really high cost. As a comparison wood-pulp (cellulose) is about 2-3 times less expensive than even 25-50% cotton mix papers, and 100% cotton is quite often 3-4+ times more expensive than the decent Cass Art and Daler Rowney wood pulp paper I use.

So I resigned myself to not using good paper unless I got a commission or something major (then ‘white page paralysis’ kicks in large as you look at the sheet of paper that cost you £3+ and worry about messing it up). But I found out about Fabriano Rosaspina paper via the excellent Parkablogs having 60% cotton mix and although meant for printing it actaully works well for watercolour work. And it is a fraction of the price of posh official watercolour papers!

You can see the results on the two watercolours here of Nick (brother of Liz who runs the Lamb pub in Surbiton), which was pretty much the first test-run of this paper apart from a quick 5PM study of John. And yes, paper makes a MASSIVE difference, especially as I quite often work wet-on-wet or want to ‘lift’ colours from the page. Cotton-based papers are much more durable and don’t break apart as easy as wood-pulp ones.

I also did a nice Stabilo All drawing of Nick which has a ‘Carel Weight vibe’ which I like but as you can see from the reverse side, this cheap drawing paper from The Works cannot take ANY water, I usually just use it for sketching as a result. I quite like the reverse though.