Trying a new substrate.

In fact I have used brown paper earlier,

but not as a substrate for watercolors/ Twinks. I know it's not acid free and all that stuff, but it's not likely I will become a Rembrant either. I love a rough surface, so I thought of trying this one. What I did was to wrinkle up the brown paper and smooth it out, several times, to achieve a softer and much more textured surface. I used my iron on the paper before I anchored it to a 140 lbs watercolor paper. Below you see my starting point.

First thing I did was to put some paint to my paper, just to have something to start with. When I saw what my paint did to the paper, I truly had my doubts. Would the paper dry back to the surface I spent time to make, or would it all be messed up. Of course it would dry, but what about the wrinkles?

To my big surprise, it dried back to the surface I had prepared. Isn't that a bit strange? In wet condition, all the wrinkles were gone but they revived. I am, of course, happy for that it's just that I don't quite understand it. Below is my piece with paint and dry.

I had been sketching this beautiful old house with a tower and a conservatory and everything was very nice, but I had difficulties transfering it. I ended up sketching a new house which was very easy to transfer. Stright lines only. I used a nib and ink to strenghten the lines at the end. This is how it looked like.

Now, the painting is the fun part so it's just to turn the brushes. The house first, and the same thing happened over again, the paper lost all the wrinkles, and it looked scary. With the house done I left it for drying and all went well. I did it all in parts and let dry in between, and voila........ finished painting.

It was very hard photographing this process, because the wrinkles caught too much light, you know, I used the Twinks for paint. Just a tiny bit penwork and it was done.

Not too bad result, and I learnt a lot during this fun experiment.

What was your last experiment?