I did it! I have painted on my hot press paper, despite being afraid to ruin it! And it works. It’s so much better for my style of painting than cold press, at the moment at least.
I also used other pans. I have recently added some artist quality paint to my collection, to see if it really makes that much of a difference compared with the student grade paint. I found a bargain somewhere, so it was within my reach.
And yes, it makes a difference, but not as much as the paper choice. I did enjoy using the new pans, though. Except that I have not yet been able to mix really dark colours. The darkest colour in the set, ivory black, is actually a bit warm in tint, so I cannot make dark cool colours yet… I have to experiment more (or add more layers).
I decided to paint a scene from Amsterdam that I photographed for painting later. As it is still quite cold outside, I’m not painting en plein air yet, but I plan to do that as soon as it gets warm enough to sit outside for a longer while.
I started with a rough sketch. The details would be filled in later, but I wanted to make sure that the shapes were in the correct positions. On my postcards I usually don’t sketch before painting, because the size of the paper is much smaller and it’s easier to see where things go, but for this larger paper I did.
Then I started painting. First a cool-warm underpainting, then working from light to dark. The artist quality paint is more transparent and at the same time more pigmented, if that makes any sense.
It’s a bit too light still, and I didn’t add any details on the streets yet. I’m still thinking about how to proceed (if so), so I stopped for now.Perhaps I will work on it more, perhaps I will decide to leave it like this.
