How to Use a Watercolor Block

Video Transcript

"What's the advantage in using a watercolor block as versus just taking paper and taping it down or pinning it to a...a board? Well there really are some good advantages, I think, to using a watercolor block. With, with a page that you would tear off, by the time you get done dripping a whole lot of water on your paper, you can have something that looks like a roller-coaster when you're done. And you can have puddles of water sometimes, where you would like them not to be. Sometimes they'll do that. So rather than taking a single sheet of paper, take a block that, in fact, is glued completely all the way around all four sides. When you paint on this, the water absorption will stay in here, and you aren't going to end up with a really rolly surface to paint on that might not leave things as cleanly as you'd like them to be left. Although we all use lots of water in water color. How do you get the paper off the block when you're done? I find blocks especially useful to go outdoors. The wind is blowing, or it may be raining, or you've got to carry things far from your car, or wherever. So if you do have a block, and you have put lots of water on this with, you know, your brush, and everything is finally finished, then it's time to take the painting off the block once it's dried. It will still be flat, it will never be rolly. And at the completion, you'll take a palette knife, or you could even take a credit card or something else, and insert that knife into this one area that's been left uncovered by glue. So if you can just easily pick out the top layer of that, insert the knife, and then pull it all the way around the other sides, voile, a single piece of paper, no ridges, no rolls. Ready to put into a frame. It's really a nice thing, particularly, I think, for outdoors. Blocks come in all sizes. They come in small sizes or large sizes. This one is Arches smooth, this one is rough, and a much bigger page. You can prop it up on an easel, you can prop it up against a rock, you can set it on your lap. And I think that it has definite advantages to just painting on a sheet that could blow away or get more easily bent, particularly when you're traveling. So until next time, this is Eileen Pestorius."