Uh-Oh! Troubleshooting Brown tape lifts on the board.The brown paper might be a weaker sort – not enough strength of glue for the thickness of the paper. When the paper dries it is so strong it pulls the gummed paper off the board.The board might be new and needed to be scrubbed with a cleaner first to “mature” it and give the surface traction.Action: Re-stretch without removing the sides that have stuck. Wet the whole sheet on the board and when it is flat, add another strip of gummed paper … [Read more...]
Stretching Paper – a few tricks
So, step by step 1) Don't dunk the paper in water or sponge water over it. Let it absorb water very gently by capillary action -lay the paper on a plastic cloth and cover it with a wet squeezed-out towel . Leave it till its floppy. (You do vellum this way as well.) 2) Cut 2 X gummed paper to the length of the board plus 12cm. 3) Cut 2X gummed paper to the width of the board plus 12cm. 4) Wet the gummed paper with a wet but not sodden sponge and run your fingers over the glue side to check that … [Read more...]
Stretching paper – it used to be so easy
I never had problems with stretching paper - after all, if you follow the rules what can go wrong? That was the case, until my last reserved of heavy duty brown gummed paper got used up. Now I can't get it any more, probably because gummed paper is replaced by plastic tape for wrapping parcels. The gummed paper is all thinner and meanly gummed. It is so important to me to keep my work super-flat, so I have worked out some ways that work - most of the time.I'll run through my methods in … [Read more...]
Watercolour Gladiolus 3: re-working the background
I'v experimented quite a bit with the gladiolus. It was too monochromatic so I tried a coloured ground, even though I had thought of gilding the background. That meant it was quite okay to underpaint it first. View the blog on 2 November! In the end I kept some of the coloured ground on the card version. The paper was badly stretched on the one corner and I like my work to be super-flat when complete, so the first thing to do was to re-stretch it. It had cockled at the time but I had to get on … [Read more...]