Comparison

Well, yes, it did strike me that if I make another bus painting, this time in my Winsor and Newton book, then we can make a comparison of sorts. So, contestant number 1 - 

This rather nice A4 ink and watercolour sketch shows a scene from c 1956. It was made in a WH Smith Globetrotter notebook. This is a discontinued line, and the paper in the book is surprisingly thin. I've bee told not to even bother trying to use watercolour on anything lighter than 130gsm. I don't know the weight of the paper in this book, but if it's 130gsm it's certainly no heavier. But I do like the way that the paper has taken these colours, and the buckling is not so bad as to prevent me from framing it and putting it in a local exhibition. 

So, having got this result from using a really light paper, what could I get from a more expensive book? Let's see our second contestant then.

This is the same sketch that I posted this morning, but it's a new photograph of it a few hours later, after the paper has had a chance to dry thoroughly. It's not as easy to compare as it could be bearing in mind that the two pictures use a different rage of colours largely. Still, I really enjoyed taking up so much of the page with the coach itself. The sketchbook here is my A4 portrait Seawhite of Brighton, with 140 gsm paper. This is still very much on the light side for applying watercolour, but once the page had time to dry out properly the amount of buckling reduced significantly. My gut feeling is that the colour is just a little subdued compared with the first sketch - but then on he other hand I don't think that I used the same set of paints. 

Let's have a look at our third and last contestant for this post - 

This was painted with the same set of paints as the previous one. This is in my Winsor and Newton portrait A4 170 gsm sketchbook. The blue works as well as the same blue in the previous sketch, maybe even a little better. The sky is a little anaemic for my liking. but the bus itself is pretty good. I wish I'd done a single seater coach rather than a double decker bus for comparison. . 

But the upshot is that there's no clear winner. I enjoyed making all three pictures and I would use any of these sketchbooks for the next one, whatever that might be.