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If Goldilocks had been a watercolorist, she might likely have selected cold-pressed paper as her favorite surface when she attempted to paint the home of the Three Bears. I can imagine her in her neighborhood art supply store, fingering the beautiful pale 30" x 22" sheets of watercolor paper, thinking, "This surface is too smooth. And that surface is too rough. I think I'll work on this nice one in the middle."
And so she did, with results yet to be discovered by art historians combing the annals of 19th-century British plein air painting.
Before I continue with my tale of turning two failed watercolor attempts into a satisfactory landscape in gouache, let me offer a quick tutorial on watercolor papers:
The industry standard, at least in the USA, is 140-pound, cold-pressed paper. Most instructors use this combination of finish and weight of a sheet of paper in communicating basics of watercolor techniques.
Cold-pressed refers to one of the three most commonly sold finishes for watercolor paper. It has a slightly textured surface, and was also the choice of Goldilocks. Hot-pressed paper is quite smooth, while rough is just that, having a more definitely textured surface than cold-pressed paper.
A ream of paper is 500 sheets. The standard size of a piece of full-size watercolor paper is 22" x 30." 500 sheets of paper designated 140-pound will weigh 140 pounds on a scale, while a ream of 300-pound paper will weigh 300 pounds.
Unlike Goldilocks, I happen to prefer either hot-pressed or rough paper, and this predilection sometimes leads me into studio trouble.
Here are the current back and front of a sheet of 300-pound rough watercolor paper. Side B, as I now think of it, shows a failed watercolor attempted in recent weeks; I began by cutting the sheet down to a 22-inch square, stapling and taping it to a watercolor board for ease of handling. Then I applied a substance called masking fluid to selected areas that I wanted to preserve as pale areas for what should have been a bank of September flowers. Normally this is a successful strategy, but in this case, it was not.
The masking fluid, of a brand that shall remain nameless, was older than I thought it was, and, once dried, absolutely could not be peeled off my big, beautiful watercolor sheet, in spite of all efforts with my thumb or a rubber cement pickup, either of which would normally have done the trick.
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