Jenny and I have been in Paris on a short break to see my daughter, and we were blessed with glorious sunny weather. This enabled us not only to have a very enjoyable time, but for me to do the occasional sketch during our pauses. There’s usually some time during the day, even in a place as busy as Paris, to spend a few moments recording a scene, and it makes a lovely souvenir of the trip.

As I’ve mentioned before, we often produce an illustrated journal from our travels, but sometimes it’s nice to carry out a watercolour on proper watercolour paper, even if it is more in sketch form than a completed painting. I nearly always take a folder with a variety of watercolour papers, NOT, rough, hot pressed, tinted, and so on, on my serious trips, but often it’s great to keep things simple and just take along your favourite watercolour paper. We should all have favourites, so if you haven’t you really should try to find out which papers suit you best.

For me the real star is Saunders Waterford, as it has an interesting surface texture combined with a truly robust nature, because it has been internally and externally sized. This can be an absolutely vital attribute if like me you make mistakes and need to sponge or scratch the paper to remove mistakes, or indeed, as a technique for creating certain effects.

St Cuthberts Mill produce the Saunders Waterford blocks containing their classic watercolour paper in convenient sizes for all three surface types, and they are ideal for painting while you travel, or if you don’t like stretching paper. It’s a great pleasure to work on really superb paper, so if you haven’t tried Waterford you are in for a treat. Check out their website