First impressions on Legion Stonehenge Aqua Hot Press Paper.

Pencil and watercolor on Legion Stonehenge Aqua Hot Press 140 lb 7" x 7"

I've been playing around with limited colors palette. For this sketch I used Yellow Ochre, Winsor Red and Cobalt Turquoise Light, all Winsor&Newton. Not an effort I made on putting this triad together really, I just liked it. This  sketch was the very first page of a third sketchbook I made entirely with Legion Stonehenge Hot Press Watercolor paper (if you want to see what other paper I used for the first two sketchbooks click here). I couldn't wait to use this sketchbook. I painted something cute to overcome the fear of the first blank page, a birdhouse and a family of three birds. It's like a nice presentation or a nice welcoming when you open the book.

I love the smoothness of the paper. The watercolor paint works nicely.  The granulation effect is to show off on hot press paper, it's just gorgeous. I found out this paper takes a long time to dry. While glazing, some sort of granulation forms, it's like you over rubbed the paper, not sure, it's not the paint. But once dry, the paper returns to its original smoothness, the granulation vanishes while you see the paint dries! I used very wet washes for the first glazes so it buckled lightly, it is easily manageable though, since the paint is not absorbed right away. After the paper dried I noticed the paper goes back to fairly flat! And didn't see distinctive divisions between the areas that were wet and the ones that never touched the water. This is a great feature, specially for a journal. 

I liked this paper to work in studio. I still have to try this on the go. l'll come back to you with another post about this. I'd like to see how the paper works with ink and lighter washes on location.