Acrylic Painting on Watercolour Paper

I’ve painted with acrylic on watercolour paper and I liked the results. I taped the 140 lb. paper down and painted wet into wet. I’ve tried to find out if the results are archival. Does anybody know?

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I’ve done illustrations that way for decades, shouldn’t be a problem.

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Thanks for the quick response, Connie!

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I’ve never tried that! For me, I need a bunch of layers of paint. I don’t know how you guys do watercolors…so once a mark is made, it’s there. No erasing. :stuck_out_tongue:

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As a student printmaker I came out of grad school with piles of Arches rag paper, so when I started painting with acrylics that was my surface for many years. Assuming your paper is archival, there is no reason to suppose that your paintings won’t be-- I’ve seen some browning of paper when used with oils, but no such problems with my oldest acrylic paintings.

The biggest problem remains that the acrylic paints, while drying, tend to shrink the face of the paper causing buckles that can be very difficult to flatten. With heavily-sized watercolor papers this will be less of an issue than with printmaking papers. My solution was to stretch the paper by spraying it with a mister bottle and staple it flat to a board to keep it tight while painting. I stopped using paper because of the increased cost of framing, and the lack of immediacy in looking at a painting under glass. I’ve switched to cradled panels.

Best,

Nat

My fave are cradled panels too.

I love painting with acrylics on watercolor paper. If it is good paper it is fine. If you work with acrylic with out too much water, 140 lb paper is fine, especially if you are layering. Actually I find the more layers (letting each layer dry before applying another) the stronger the paper gets. One thing about using paper you can easily crop your painting. And if you want to frame without matting the work just use gel medium and adhere the painting to a board or canvas.

I imagine if you use good quality paint they should hold up just fine…especially if you use a good quality varnish over it. I like Kamar Spray Varnish.

The Arches watercolor paper is one of the products I love as this brand has set the standards in terms of quality. I also prefer this cotton paper when I want to use other drawing instruments alongside watercolor, acrylic, and gouache. Great for mixed media artworks.