Paper Painting

J.M.W. Turner

He is probably was the most famous English landscape painter, he was well versed with paper as a medium and used it in most innovative ways. He was one of the first artists to experiment with washes, wiping out, scratching out, and incorporating body colors. His innovative wash technique, which helped convey lights in the most breathtaking manner made him famous as the “painter of the light”.

His oil paintings might have been famous but his watercolors on paper were equally path breaking.

Paul Sandby

He was known as the father of “English watercolors” and his landscape paintings earned him a position in Britain's Royal Academy. He was a renowned Map Maker, which complemented to his understanding of the English landscapes.

His paintings of the Welsh countryside are still proclaimed to be one of the best paintings of the English landscape.

Watercolors - the colors

The colors used for paintings on paper are water-soluble pigments. The solidified form of the pigments is called gouache. These gouaches are made of ground pigments mixed with gum for body and glycerin and honey for viscosity. For opacity unpigmented filler is added and oil of clove is added to prevent mold.

Watercolors-the technique

A brush is generally used to apply watercolors. The colors are thinned with water before being applied on paper and water adds transparency to the paintings. This very transparency adds sparkle to these paintings because light passed through the thin film of paint and is reflected back to the viewer's eye.

Though different water-soluble colors are used for Painting on Paper white is traditionally never used, because the white color of the paper is the only white needed for such paintings.

Watercolor paintings need an understanding of colors because it is in its best when the colors blend into each other.

Painting on Paper is just another way of expressing creativity. The only difference is that the medium offers us with the luxury of depicting lights and colors in the subtlest ways.