The Little Fossicker

One of the problems I experience as an artist living in Australia is the lack of available materials and resources we can access as compared to the US and UK. When I first started painting miniature watercolours 3 or 4 years ago, I wasn't happy with traditional watercolour papers and so the search was on for a surface that would allow me to produce fine detail, and also allow for some reworking. I stumbled across Fredrix Watercolor Canvas and loved what this surface enabled me to do with watercolours. But paintings done on this surface don't reproduce into prints very well as they tend to have quite a grainy appearance. At that time, I couldn't find a quality Illustration board in any of our local artshops, and whilst I could have ordered some from the US, this isn't always practical when it comes to ordering large sheets.

The other day, I stumbled across some Crescent Illustration Board in one of our local artshops and decided to redo a little painting of one of our boys when they were young (one of my favourites). The painting on top was done two years ago on the canvas, and the one below was done on the illustration board. Some of you may prefer the canvas, but I must admit I was much happier with the results on the illustration board. We head off tomorrow for our holiday and I will definitely be packing the watercolours for more experimenting.