Review: Legion Stonehenge Aqua Watercolor Paper

Spring, 2017
I've been watching some YouTube videos about watercolor, and by referral, found a watercolorist who had asked for and received free watercolor paper as samples, from the Legion paper company.
So I asked too, and they sent me a nice package with their Stonehenge watercolor blocks in both cold press, a medium textured surface, and their hot press block , a smooth surface. The pads are 9" x 12"

I promised to write a review, after trying it.

Here's what I did with the Hot Press:

And here's what I did with the Cold Press:

The last two were done by following instructional videos by Patrick Ley Greaves. This guy is a wonderful painter, and so generous with his time and knowledge. His web site is HERE, where he lists the video tutorials that you can watch. (Menu bar across the top.)

In general, I found working on these papers to be challenging. I am used to "magic papers," like Arches or (the best of the best) Twinrocker watercolor paper. The Arches you can get at just about any art supply company, and a few places carry Twinrocker, but mostly you can order that thru the company. It's the best paper I've ever worked on, magic paper.

Nice things I can say about the Legion Stonehenge Aqua paper is that
- the watercolor colors stay vivid
- it lifts pretty well
- it has a nice weight to it
- Their marketing department is awesome.

Mostly I had trouble with washes on this paper. If you look at the leaves on both iris pieces, you'll see mottling. Maybe there is too much sizing on the surface of the paper. I painted just like I always do, wet onto dry paper, controlling the flow and changing colors while I move down the leaf shape. Here that didn't work. I had more luck with wetting an entire shape to be painted, and THEN painting into the wet shapes. (Like the hot pink iris petals, painted this way. You can also see some lifting there.)

I still found the washes quite difficult to control.

For me, watercolor is hard enough, I need all the magic I can find, so paper makes a huge difference.
For a more experienced painter this might be lovely paper, but I'll stick with paper I know will almost paint for me, the Arhces and Twinrocker, (when I can get it.) I've passed along some of my sample paper to a calligrapher cousin, who may find that this is wonderful paper for calligraphy.

The Lowly Ball Point Pen

 One of my drawings done with blue ball point pens, and a detail below:

There are some wonderful artists, who specialize in the use of this lowly tool, and make amazing drawings with it. It does take patience, and a light touch, but that comes with the using of it. You get a feel for it. How to vary the pressure in your lines to produce the effect that you like.You can build up the tones with cross hatching, and use the contours of your subject to find the direction of your hatching marks. (Notice my pointer here, from yesterday's post?)

I would suggest a fine point pen, or even extra fine, which are tricky to find. Most drug stores and grocery stores carry the medium points, but if you go online, you'll be able to find a fine or extra fine point.

Andrea Joseph is a terrific ball point pen artist, though lately she's been branching into other media and styles. If you want to see some of her amazing work, click on this link, and follow her Flickr from page 5 to 13. I promise that you'll be impressed. Maybe even inspired. (Check out all the shoes on page 6, yes, all ball point!) See what you have around the house, give it a try. Or otherwise....

Here are a couple of links to amazon bp pens, in fine point, and in various colors.

Pilot Precise V5

uni-ball Vision

Mechanical Pencil

My favorite and best mechanical pencil, which I use for anything and everything, is the Mars Staedtler 780.
It feels solid in my hand, is just the right thickness, and has interchangeable graphite refills. Most of the time I have an HB lead in mine. (That's a middle of the road graphite.) You can put hard graphite in the pencil, all the way up to a 4H, or the softer leads in the B's, down to 4B. (which would be very soft.)

My favorite thing about this pencil, besides the fact of the changeable refills, is the sharp point....

Which you get by using the sharpener, called a pointer, pictured below. You stick the extended point of your pencil into the hole of the sharpener, rotate it, and get a wonderful sharp point in seconds. You can take the top off to dump the graphite dust, or use it for drawing. (Dust drawing). The little white area on the pointer is for wiping off your point.

All of these are available thru Amazon, the links are in the sidebar.
And yes, I do get a small kick back (as an Amazon affiliate) if you buy thru one of the links here. Thanks!

My Current Favorite Pencil

So, we'll start with some basics. Pencils.

I adore pencils, and why not?...after crayons, it's our first tool. And when you want control, you can't beat a pencil. I have a lot of different pencils, and I'm sure that you do too. Graphite pencils, charcoal, colored pencils, water soluble toning pencils, watercolor pencils, and I'm sure there are plenty of others that I'm not thinking of at the moment. I'm also sure that you have your favorites, and that your favorites switch, as you might try something new.

My current favorite pencil for sketching is a Stabilo "All" 8046. It's a dense black pencil. It also comes in some colors (which I have not tried), and brown and white. It is water soluble, so you can make washes by brushing with water. I like this one because it's a hefty black, has almost a waxy dense color, takes punishment without the tip breaking, and has a wonderful flow on the paper. It's great for the way I like to sketch. And bonus, you can sharpen it in a standard pencil sharpener, so no fussing with Exacto knives.

Here are a few sketches I've done, and then the links to the pencils on Amazon. I am an Amazon affiliate, so if you buy through this page, I get a small kick back. (We have to say that.)

All the sketches below are done with Stabilo pencil in two different sizes of Piccadilly notebooks. They are cheaper than the Moleskine notebooks, but have much thinner paper. The paper is the same sort of smooth creamy buff color as what's in the Moleskines. You can see a bit of a ghost above, it's the next page's sketch showing thru. For my purposes though, quick sketches of people riding the Metro, it is a perfect sketchbook. The paper has a smooth surface. I've linked to the Piccadilly in the sidebar.

You can tell that I sketch "hard" with a lot of pressure on the page. Since you are very limited in time when drawing people on a train, these are not only hard, but fast and direct. The Stabilo just suits. Links below.


Black Pencil

White Pencil

Brown Pencil

Welcome!

Greetings to my fellow art junkies.

I hope you'll enjoy this blog, find it useful, and come back often. This is where I'll talk about products I'm using, what works for me and why, things I've tried, and art supplies in general. Don't you love it when you take a course, and "Have to" get new toys to play with? Yeah, me too.

Don't you just love to browse in an art store? You get lost in there, don't you?
And doesn't the time just disappear when you go to an online art store?

All those pencils, sketchbooks, pastels, paper, canvases, paint, neat tools, brushes.....yes, I know...

Since I love those too, I am in the process of joining some affiliate programs, (I'll explain, you may want to think about doing it too.) and the plan is to offer links to some of the products I know and use, with little reviews. Maybe some how-to's as well. I'll get a small kickback from the products you buy from here, which is pretty cool.

This one is a watercolor, so I'll be talking some about that.

...and a gouache painting on paper.
(Gouache, as you probably know, is a more opaque, fine and denser watercolor)

And since I also do a lot of landscapes, here's a recent one, in oils on a canvas panel:

If you are interested, the Affiliate Programs are offered by many online companies, of all types. You pick and choose which ones you want to apply to, most often subjects and products that you are already interested in, and then once you are accepted, you have access to their affiliate product links. (You need these special links, so that you'll get paid.) Most often there's a small percentage and a window of time involved. Maybe you see something here that you want to see on say, Dick Blick, and so you click on my link. You don't buy it today, but maybe within the time allowed, (sometimes as much as a week) you do decide to get that item, that paint, that pencil, whatever, and so you go back and find it, put it in your cart, and I get a small commission. Isn't that cool?

Here's a link to the Dick Blick Affiliate page, so you can read a bit about it.
It will take me awhile to get it all off the ground, but I'm thinking it'll be fun! Hope you'll join me here.