Starting a piece

I decided to start a painting commission today.

I unboxed my new wooden table easel that I bought yesterday afternoon - this watercolor piece is going to be pretty large, 16x20 in, so if I had to paint it flat, I wouldn’t trust my perspectives to be correct. Having a slanted table easel helps a lot with looking at it more straight-on. No wonky perspectives are gonna happen here!

I dug my paper cutting mat out from the depths of under my bed (and, admittedly, got a little distracted tidying up some of the things under there in the process).

I measured out and cut down the piece of watercolor paper, using a straight edge metal ruler and a fresh exacto knife.

With a pencil, I carefully marked out a 2 inch border around the entire paper - I cut it to be 18x24 so that I could create a crisp 2 inch white border surrounding the painting.

I ripped off large pieces of painter’s tape and lay them out along my pencil lines, creating my border that watercolor paint wouldn’t be able to seep into.

I lay my cut and taped paper onto my table easel and then took a couple more pieces of painter’s tape to hold it all in place.

And… yep, that was enough. I’ll start sketching tomorrow.