Watercolor Painting and Framing the Calla Lili
Step-by-step watercolor still-life painting demonstration
This free lesson provided by Mary Churchill
Click here to learn about artist and teacher Mary Churchill
In the beginning
To begin: Look to a standard frame size and work backward to determine the paper size.
11 x 14
12 x 16
14 x 18
12 x 24
16 x 20
18 x 24
20 x 24
24 x 36
I like a 2 or 3 inch mat all around on my paintings for simplicity. I often will use a double mat with the top mat about a 1⁄4” smaller. In this case, I chose a 2” mat.
I will first, accurately, cut my mat to finished size of the frame using a box cutter. I mark on the back of the mat board, the 2” all around. Next I remove the center, using my Logan mat cutter. For the 12 x 16 mat, I will now have my finished mat.
The Watercolor paper for my painting will fit behind the opening in the mat with about an extra inch all around. This should make my watercolor paper size roughly 9 x 13.
I have never had difficulty, and therefore prefer ARCHES Watercolor paper.
Now to prepare the paper.
There are many methods to accomplish this. Sometimes I will submerge the paper in a deep sink/bath tub or even the plastic tub used for wall-papering.
I like to lay the paper on a bath towel to absorb the excess water and then quickly mount the paper to the board using staples. I let the paper dry TOTALLY on the board.
My "board" has been prepared and in use for many years. I purchased this board at the Home Lumber yard. I then painted both sides of the board using a quality paint sealer.
My favorite method is to first mount a dry paper to my board.
At this point I like to do my drawing. With a wet, natural sponge, I saturate the paper and spread the water with the sponge. This method will remove any imperfections in the paper.
I sometimes mount the wet paper very quickly because the paper will stretch a lot during the mounting process. I let it dry until the next day.
For tiny paintings, I will just mount the paper to a Field Board using masking tape. Then sketch.
Whichever method I use is based on the final look of my painting. For wet on wet, the paper will be very wet when I put the paint to paper. Mostly, the paper will be totally dry before paint is on the paper. Dry paper will prevent a BLOOM which is quite impossible to eliminate. At any rate, I sketch only on dry paper.
