Oh, I really like how that turned out. Thank you for posting progress photos, too; I love seeing that sort of thing!
When I worked with watercolors and gouache in the past, I've found that the best way to prevent the paper from wrinkling too much is to follow these steps: 1. Take your largest watercolor brush and lightly to moderately brush clean water on the BACK, as if you were doing a wash over the entire thing. 2. Turn the paper over so the wet side is on the bottom and place it on a hard surface - ideally something like a wooden easel backboard. You want it flat and smooth. I like them to be only a little bit larger than the paper so I can move it around easily on my desk, or to wherever. 3. Pressing it flat and kid of pushing the edges out, tape all four edges to the board with either that black artist tape or blue painter's tape. These types of masking tapes have a low amount of adhesive and can peel back off the paper easily. 4. Let the paper dry, usually 15-30 minutes, before starting to work on it.
The reason why this works is the water in your paint causes the paper to unevenly expand, and then when it dries, places where it was stretched buckle up or down. By getting the back of the paper wet first, it can slow down or stop the normal wrinkling.
I've never tried it on paintings I've already done where I did not use that method, so I don't know if it can be used to flatten the one you have. However, I HAVE tried the ironing method to varying degrees of success. For that, you want to have your iron on the lowest setting possible, and then place a (very clean!) towel over your painting. Carefully iron the towel so it transfers the heat and pressure to the painting. You have to be cautious of over-ironing the paper, though, or of forcing the wrinkles to flatten down oddly.
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Date: 18/11/09 17:58 (UTC)When I worked with watercolors and gouache in the past, I've found that the best way to prevent the paper from wrinkling too much is to follow these steps:
1. Take your largest watercolor brush and lightly to moderately brush clean water on the BACK, as if you were doing a wash over the entire thing.
2. Turn the paper over so the wet side is on the bottom and place it on a hard surface - ideally something like a wooden easel backboard. You want it flat and smooth. I like them to be only a little bit larger than the paper so I can move it around easily on my desk, or to wherever.
3. Pressing it flat and kid of pushing the edges out, tape all four edges to the board with either that black artist tape or blue painter's tape. These types of masking tapes have a low amount of adhesive and can peel back off the paper easily.
4. Let the paper dry, usually 15-30 minutes, before starting to work on it.
The reason why this works is the water in your paint causes the paper to unevenly expand, and then when it dries, places where it was stretched buckle up or down. By getting the back of the paper wet first, it can slow down or stop the normal wrinkling.
I've never tried it on paintings I've already done where I did not use that method, so I don't know if it can be used to flatten the one you have. However, I HAVE tried the ironing method to varying degrees of success. For that, you want to have your iron on the lowest setting possible, and then place a (very clean!) towel over your painting. Carefully iron the towel so it transfers the heat and pressure to the painting. You have to be cautious of over-ironing the paper, though, or of forcing the wrinkles to flatten down oddly.