Alice Hendon, Artangleology

  Hahnemühle has a new watercolor book available and you are going to need to get one for yourself! Or maybe two! I love mine and have had a fun time trying out various art methods in it. Not just watercolor. Let me show you.  The 95 lb. pages are roughly 5.5" square and come in either beige or grey shades. The book I have is beige. I did not know how the color of the page would affect my art, so I just got right to work. I could figure it out along the way. The pages lay flat when the hard cover book is open. There are sixty pages total, that comes out to 120 work surfaces. The page surface is smooth with very little texture. I began with some painter's tape along the edges on one page. After wetting down the entire page I added Schmincke watercolors in bands of color, then let them sit to dry.  After spritzing some water on the dry page, I brought in some extra lines of color with my Schminckes.  Remember I said I didn't know how the beige paper would affect my ...

  Did you know every year on October 1st we celebrate World Postcard Day? Yep! We do! It happens each year since 2019 when we celebrated the 150th anniversary of the postcard. Need to shoot off a message to Grandma but too tired to write a full blown letter? Maybe time is an issue? Perhaps you want to pen a short message to brighten someone's day? The postcard can be your go-to for birthdays, holidays, retirements, catching up or to just say "hello, I was thinking about you." And where do you start? Well, you really should start with Hahnemühle . I did. I grabbed a tin of their cold pressed watercolor postcards and a pad of their Nostalgie sketch postcards and got started.  Since the tin postcards are advertised as 'watercolor' I began by pulling out my set of Schmincke watercolors and painted a nice wet on wet background. I love the bright colors you get with Schmincke and this paper loved the color. I was able to stick with just one layer of paint for this par...

  Gotta love Kimberly McGuiness' sense of humor! And you have to love her new sketchbook! This 8.5" square book has 120 pages where you can bring your creativity to life. I was fortunate to beta test this book and I want to show you how I put my copy of Yes This is a Friggin' Sketchbook to use.  This is what the pages look like - a book full of double spreads for you to work your magic on. The floral designs at the outer corners are for you to test your art tool to see how it interacts with the paper. The cream colored pages are smooth and take pen really well. The one concern I had was the weight of the paper. I know from experience that Kimberly has no control over the paper weight. Kindle uses just one kind of paper for this type of book. The book description tells us right up front the pages are a 50 - 61 pound weight, depending on what country your copy is printed in.  I figured the best way to tell what the paper could take was to just jump right in! I went to the ...

In my last post I showed you a brand new product from Hahnemühle . So brand new that it is just now hitting stores in the United States. The Watercolor Bookmark Pad is already available in Europe . In this photo you can see the very first piece of art I created with one of these bookmarks.  Made of 100% cotton cold pressed watercolor paper, the glued pad has fifteen bookmarks waiting for you to add your art to. I tried several different projects with a load of different products. I wanted to see what these bookmarks could handle, and they handled everything I threw at them very well.  The bookmarks are approximately 2" x 8", cold pressed surface on one side and a little smoother on the reverse. For this first piece I went with the straight up cold pressed side. Ranger's Distress Oxide and Distress Inks are some of my favorite tools lately. I used that little blending tool and started swirling color onto my paper.  And I added color till the whole side was covered. I di...