Canson Aquarelle/ Water color paper. Yes, you can print on it!

jtoolman

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About a year ago I posted something on printing on Canson Aquarelle / Water color paper 300 gram artist paper. You can get it at any art shop or at your local Michaels.
Last night I was there with my wife and decided to get a pad of 12" x 18" Canson WC
The last time I used it was to print some restored 70-80 year old scanned photos I did for a friend.
I printed them on my PRO 3800 with OCP K3 inks using the EPSON profile for "Enhanced Matte Paper"
The results were good but a bit flat which was understandable since the paper has no Ink Jet coating at all.
This time I decided to create a custom profile for it with the Colormunki.
Now what to print on it.
Though I have been painting with oils practically all my life I have been creating digital paintings for the last 5-6 years with Corel Painter and WACOM Tablet, using a Photographic image as my starting point and modifying it as needed for artistic effect.
I made sure the image file I chose had a full range of tones from a pure black ( 0 ) to areas of pure white ( 255 ) which would correspond to areas of no paint but what would be plain paper or Gessoed canvas.
Realizing that the paper I was using did not have an inkjet coating I felt I had to increase saturation a tiny bit ( 5 in Qimage ) bit as well as contrast ( 3 in Qimage ) and also did output sharpening with Qiamge's new Deep Focus Sharpening set a 2/100.
Printer was PRO 3800 / Enhanced Matte Paper / Quality 4 / Custom Colormunki Profile created using the same exact settings.
The scene is an outdoor café in Annapolis, Maryland.
I reduced the physical size of the image to upload.

_DSC0720small.jpg


I lit the print with two halogen lamps and shot it with my Nikon D-90 with the normal kit lens on top of my Rotatrim against my blue wall. That is my signature in pencil on the lower right. The paper is nice and thick and just stands up with any need of support.
View: original size
As you all can see the result is pretty darn good. Deep blacks, great contrast and saturation and clean, bright highlights.
Now for the best part. A pad of 30 sheets of 12" x 18" Canson Aquarelle / Watercolor 300 gram retails for only $20!!!
At checkout I gave the sales girl my email address and received a further discount!!! SO even without the extra discount I got this for 66 cents a sheet. It prints as good as say Red River Aurora white. Add the super low cost of OCP K3 inks ( I am paying on average about 4 cents per ml when purchased in pint bottles and I think I have found a WINNER combo!
What else could be done? Maybe a coat of protectant UV spray if it is not to be framed under glass!

Joe
 

stratman

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At checkout I gave the sales girl my email address and received a further discount!!!
Hope your wife doesn't find out! :hide

Well done.
 

Emulator

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I must get some water colour paper and try that out, it could become popular! I hope you don't mind but I have copied the image and printed it A4 on Sihl glossy paper. Its not ideal but it looks fine and I'll put it in the lounge and see how people react.:) I'll let you know if you get any orders, you could be on to a winner.

I subsequently found we had some gummed water colour paper 14 x 10 inches 140lbs, 300g/sqm so I printed it on that, the blacks are not so dense and the whites don't have the benefit of optical brightner, but it looks very good and natural.
 
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jtoolman

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I'll post you the real image. The one on top is a shot of the print.
Joe
 

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stratman

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I sent it to a friend who had a contemporary arts gallery in town who wrote back "Nice decorative image looks like French cafe". I think so too even though I know it is not. I would hang it in my home.
 

Emulator

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Thanks Joe I'll experiment with that. One could imagine it was a long lost European master! I'll send it to my daughter, without the signature and ask her, who she thinks it's painted by (I should say by whom she thinks it is painted).
 

jtoolman

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By COREL!!! Sounds sort French mon ami! NO?

Corel Painter X3 + a good shot as a beginning idea - a blank layer above that at 50% opacity and "Digital" charcoal brush to do the initial sketch. Then you do the underpainting with deep blue and then begin to add brush strokes as with real painting which can take several days. You can even control the wetness of the oil paint to simulate drying times an such.
At that point I no longer follow the original image and discard it.

Joe
 

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Joe,
I note above that you made Colormunki profiles with the watercolour paper!
I tried that myself today. Using the same printer settings as I am finding successful with the images I am printing using a Canson Profile.

I am using Colormunki Photo and it is giving me colour bleeding between the Blue and Yellow patches in the 5th (last) column. The Munki will not read the last column, and I am assuming that is the problem. I use wide PG, but have also tried 'wider' slower faster, more and less ink and still can't get past that damn pair.......they just LOVE each other to bits!

Anything special I need to do to get a profile please?

Cheers,

Andrew
 

jtoolman

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NO ideas what might be causing the bleed problem. I had no problem with scanning the CM charts with CMP.
My profile is for OCP K3 inks so unless you are also using OCP, I could send you my profile. Otherwise I would try to reprint the charts.
 
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