Canson Paper

The other day I went out to paint, but wanted to do something larger than the 12"x18" sheets of Wallis paper I've been doing lately. I took a sheet of gray Canson paper, taped it to my board and off I went.

It was a hot night, so I headed up to the beach with a couple of my kids. I set up on the sand and went to work.

I was immediately struck by how smooth the surface of the paper was. Now I have been using Wallis paper exclusively for over 3 years and am very used to the toothiness of it. This was very different. I was unable to put layer on top of layer like I do with the Wallis. In fact, as I tried to apply more and more layers on top of the first ones, I noticed that the pastel stick was actually rubbing the first layers off into a pile on my easel tray! This wasn't making me happy. Pastels are a very expensive medium to use. One of the most expensive, as a matter of fact. The idea of having the pastel just turn into dust which will be wiped away is very unappealing to me. I tend to be very thrifty.

I continued to work the painting, however and after a while, noticed that the smoothness of the paper caused the painting to look very soft and smooth, too. I've noticed that sometimes with the Wallis, drawn lines can appear very defined since the paper tends to hold whatever is put onto it. It's also easy to put down very stong lines with Wallis, but the smoothness of the Canson make that more difficult since the pastel sort of skates across the surface instead of being ground right into it.

I ultimately liked the way the painting came out and will post a photo of it. I am also planning to try using the watercolor paper again to see if I can use that again with landscape. After all, I still have about half a case of the stuff laying around.