Garzapapel paper testing (3) - foliage and petals of the hibiscus flowers

When the background wash was completely dry I started to work on the green leaves and petals of the hibiscus. The differences in the various papers behavior were not really so big, and the following photos give you an overview of a few more steps and the final little paintings (the order is always the same - Garza, Arches, Fabriano).

First wash of yellow on the leaves:

Building up the greens:

 Hibiscus flowers petal wok - intermediary step:

And the final little paintings, scanned to give the true colors and details:

Now that all 3 are ready, I think it was a very good experience to them in parallel and keep notes while working, as this in the end allowed me a more objective evaluation of all papers, even if I was used to the feeling and behavior of Fabriano and Arches papers. I would say that Arches and Garzapapel are more suitable to work "at once", as they remain moist for longer time, and you can keep working a wash for much longer time. Fabriano dries faster and allows easier the glazing, as you do not need to wait for the next day to lay a new wash. At least this applies for these small paper size that I used.
I would say that the decision to choose any of these 3 papers in the future will be mostly affected by their availability in the retail shops (unfortunately right now none of them is available in Patras), their price and discounts in the e-shops and the shipping costs. Although I find paper as fabulous prices in online shop (i.e. Fabriano in Italy), when adding the shipping costs, the real cost per sheet goes very high, as I cannot stock at once hundreds of sheets.

Garzapapel paper testing (2) - drawing and background wash

Moving further with my test of the Garzapapel, I am going to paint at the same time some red hibiscus flowers on Garza, Arches and Fabriano papers. All 3 papers are of the same (small) size, of 5x7 inches and are of the same weight of 140 lb.
I started with the pencil drawing of the hibiscus flowers on all 3 papers, as follows:

Garzapapel drawing:

Arches drawing:

Fabriano drawing:

I didn't notice any difference in the three drawings, for which I used a 2B pencil.

In order to keep things as simple as possible, I decided to go with a limited  palette of only 3 colors from Sennelier, namely: Sennelier Yellow Light, Rose Opera and Cinereous Blue. And I am using two Pentel brushes, small and large. The materials and a test of the colors are shown bellow:

I started with the background washes, by wetting first the bigger area with clean water and starting to drop in paint.

Garzapapel background wash:

Arches background wash:

Fabriano background wash:

Garzapapel and Arches absorbed water well, while the Fabriano paper did not absorb very well. The wet-in-wet pigment movement was similar for all 3 papers. The Fabriano paper started to dry out very fast, and didn't give me the time fully work the background in one wash, while Arches and Garzapapel remained wet even quite some time after I took the photos. The Garzapapel and Fabriano papers started to buckle at some point, while the paper was wet, while Arches had bucked edges when dry out.
After a while, when trying to add some more washes to the background, the Garzapapel was more difficult to work with, like the paper wasn't completely dry.
I left all 3 papers under a pile of books over night, and they were all 3 very flat again the next morning, ready for more washes (to be continued in the next post).

Garzapapel watercolor paper - sample testing

It was a very nice surprise to find in my post box the sample from Garzapapel only a few days after I order it from their website (www.garzapapel.com). There were two sets of 3 sheets each for the two types (300 and 180 grs) of this hand made watercolor paper, which is 100% recycled cotton with four deckle edges and a very special extra white texture. Each sheet of paper has a size of 14x20 cm, which corresponds to approximately 1/16 (app. 5x7 inches) of a normal sheet of watercolor paper (usual size of 22x30 inches). The sample sheets were carefully packed, and as soon as I open the envelope I was surprised by the extremely white paper. As I have used papers from many manufacturers before, I think this one is close in color to the Kilimanjaro paper, but I do not have anymore of it to compare it. However, I do have many other papers to compare, as you can see bellow. I compared the 300 grs (140 lb) paper, as I do not have "light" paper (180 grs = 90 lb) from other manufacturers.

Garzapapel vs Arches White CP

Garzapapel vs Arches HP

Garzapapel vs Arches CP

Garzapapel vs Fabriano

Garzapapel vs Waterford

The texture of the Garzapapel watercolor paper looks very close to that of Arches CP watercolor paper. The Garzapapel is not that hard (board-like) as the other papers, and if I didn't knew they are the same weight I would think this one is lighter.
I put the paper on a light box to check how easy would be to transfer a drawing, and it seems a bit more transparent compared to Arches and Fabriano.

Following, I will do a comparative test of how the paper react to water/paints, doing similar paintings on Arches and Fabriano at the same time.

Anacamptis papilionacea - the Mediterranean Butterfly Orchid

During spring time I was surprised by the large variety of orchids that I was meeting at each step in our village (Kampi Village, Zakynthos Island, Greece), all of them so beautiful and delicate! I got many photos, but it was like never the light was the best, or the location of the little flower, etc. I think this will go into a small series of paintings of orchids from Kampi, and it will not finish very soon as I need to do some field studies for each species. However, here it is the first "portrait" of the so called Butterfly Orchid, although there are many species around the world with this common name. The actual species is Anacamptis papilionacea (syn Orchis papilionacea), and it might be the sub-species Heroica as it has quite big white "wings", but I am not sure about it. The painting has a size of approximately 10x10 inches, and it is done with W&N and Daniel Smith watercolors on Waterford 140lb Rough paper.

Pitharia - large-sized ceramic storage jars from Minoan era

These huge ceramic-made storage jars, sometime one meter tall, which are called pitharia in Greece, have been used since the Minoan era to store cereals and olive oil. They are still crafted in Greece, but currently are used for decor, to plant small trees or flowers, especially in the villages.
Our host for the May 30 WDE on WetCanvas, Athena (from Sparti) shared with us a lovely photo of these pitharia. I did some changes in the background, and I did try to capture the hot summer sun on the big jar. This watercolor on paper is about 7x10 inches in size.

Weekend Plain Air Studies

On Sunday we went out with my boy to a play ground, as we usually do in weekends, and for the first time I took with me my small field box. It is a Cotman field box, but now the Cotman paints are long gone and I have replaced them with various artist grade paints (W&N, American Journey, Daniel Smith) from tubes and let them bone dry to be able to carry it in my purse. I also have a Pentel brush, which allows me to go out without a water container - it holds enough water for small studies (7x5 inches). So, my son and my husband were playing, I did a fast study of one of the pine trees near by. I liked the leaning profile of the tree against the blue of the sea and sky. It was a direct paint application, without any preliminary pencil drawing, and I was looking to capture the tree "portrait" and the light.

Latter, at evening, I noticed the strange combination of sunset colors and close dark clouds while looking on the other side of Patras Bay, the Antirio mountain land. And did another small study with direct paint on the paper without any pencil drawing. I am starting to enjoy very much these small plain air studies!

I must get another one of the last done in the studio, with much stronger sunset colors, as they were in reality. Somehow, much of the color intensity got lost while drying.