How To Stretch The Paper For Watercolor Painting!

In this short step-by-step video you will see how to stretch the paper for watercolor painting. I used 300gr Arches hot pressed paper and a wooden board where to stretch the paper. Also you will need water, natural honeycomb sea sponge from Amazon or any other sponge, paper towels, gummed brown paper tape https://www.jacksonsart.com/handover-gummed-brown-paper-tape-30mmx200m or any other gummed brown paper tape.

In this short video I will show you step-by-step how to stretch the paper, I must apologise for some parts in the video where I stand in the front of the camera and closing the view, but it will be only for few seconds :)

After finishing applying the paper to the wooden board, the paper will absorb the water and it will become swelled and buckled, don't worry and leave overnight to completely dry and then you will see a perfectly stretched paper. As you can see in the photo!

This stretching is very helpful for watercolor paintings

Especially it is helpful for botanical illustrations, botanical paintings, watery paintings and many layer technique painting. If the paper on which you are planning to paint is 250gsm or 300gsm - you need to stretch it to avoid bubbled paper at the end of the painting process.

For some botanical paintings I use 600gr paper and this type of paper doesn't need stretching, because the paper is thick and it will not swell, even if you are applying very watery layers.
But if happens that you didn't stretched the paper and after finishing your work the paper buckled up then it's not a disaster you still can fix this problem :). Here I'm sharing this Youtube video with instructions how to fix this problem in one way (practically the same method as mine the only difference is that I do the stretching before painting process) or this Youtube video showing another method! You can choose what will work best for You :)