Well the underpainting to The Silkworm is done. The windmills are only quite small, smaller than my hand but they still took about eight hours to paint because of the tiny bits. The squillion holes in the sails make them an intellectual challenge!
But ho! This post is about paper. I wanted to prepare the paper for a 120x75cm painting so have a new roll of Fabriano Accademia drawing paper (which looks to be good for this sort of thing) but then came the problem of curling. I decided to lay it flat on a big board curl side down (so it bulges up) and weigh it down with books. Then I applied some Golden GAC400 with a sponge, an acrylic "stiffener". It doesn't really stiffen that much but is better than normal acrylic medium. The paper still buckled but flattening it when it was damp was reasonably effective. Applying any watery thing to paper will probably buckle it, but this is too big to stretch! I think it's flat enough to draw on now but I'll keep thinking of how to flatten curling paper more perfectly... Tips appreciated if anyone has any!!
