PREPARING YOUR PAPER AND LAYING IT

What I am showing you is MY method, other artists work in other ways.

Some do soak their watercolour paper for a couple of minutes to 20 minutes (all depends of the quality of the paper and the weight - Under 300lbs the paper should be soaked and stretched)

I work on 300lbs or more, I used to stretch my paper but I have found that a few artists commented about not to and I tried their method. I would not stretch paper again since I find that the paint is laying with beautiful result on a non stretched paper.

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So here is what I do :

I lay my paper on a MDF board, bought in B&Q, cut by my husband to my required sizes.

I fix it to the board with masking tape and with staples from my staple gun all around the edges.

Now I fix some more masking tape again to look like a mount, making sure that it is with right angles, I staple once more this masking tape at each corner only, it stops the tape from peeling off when it is wet.

Once the painting is finished, this masking tape is removed and give an outlook of the painting with clean edges.

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NOW HOW DO I END UP WITH A FLAT PAINTING ?

On the reverse of the finished painting I spray a generous amount of water.

I then wipe all over the back of the picture with tissue paper.

The picture is then laid between two pieces of CLEAN paper.

I was lucky enough to have a daughter who had left me a couple of A1 pieces of watercolour for which I did not have any use and so I lay my pictures in between. I have used them for 5 years now !

Put a heavy weight on top of it and forget it (You must not touch it !) for about 48 hours.

You will have a perfectly flat paper ready for framing.