A Hahnemühle Harmony Product Review Kind of Journal #hahnemuhle #hahnemühle #hahnemühleharmony

 For the past week and a half I have been 

working on a special project.

A super fun one that involves some product from

Hahnemühle Fine Art.  

 More specifically, I have been playing . . . 

uh, working . . . 

with one of Hahnemühle's new papers

called Harmony!

I used the hot pressed watercolour block for this project.

The Harmony is a natural white paper designed to

work with all wet-painting techniques.

Acid-free, light-resistant, extreme longevity,

excellent colors, natural brilliance -

these are just some of the words used to 

describe Harmony. 

I'd love to show you what I worked on

and tell you what I think about this paper. 

And yes, this is going to be a super duper

photo-loaded art-a-palooza kind of post!

I began by removing four sheets from the block

and cutting them down into 4.5" x 6" sections.

This gave me a total of 16 sheets to work with.

Then I used my trusty little hole puncher from 

Create 365 The Happy Planner and punched

holes along one side.

Those cool little pink circlets are called

discs

and they serve to hold the book together. 

In artsy terms this is called a disc-bound journal.

I used a piece of tangled acetate for the cover and

sacrificed one page of the Harmony to undercoat

the design, then I added the other 15 pages behind that. 

I used so much product in this book. 

I will do a separate tutorial for how I built this

particular page - since it's probably my favorite.

Peerless watercolors.

They are little swatches of highly concentrated color

and you literally just use a water brush to pick up

the color and transfer it to the paper. 

Once it was dry, I added the tangles and the white

highlights. You can see the punched holes along that

left side. The discs sit inside the larger portion.

This was the only page I used peerless on and they

worked exceptionally well.

I did not use a lot of water. 

 I pulled out my favorite Schmincke watercolor pans

and made color backgrounds on three surfaces.

Here you can get an idea of the pages and

how they interact with the discs.

For this particular page, I worked mostly wet onto dry.

I put the color on, then blended it around with the

water brush and let the edges of color flow into each other. 

Tangling worked great. 

The paper surface stayed smooth and I had

literally no warping or dimpling of the paper itself. 

Harmony is 140 lbs. and it can handle the wet. 

 These next 2 pages were done with the 

wet into wet technique alaAlice. 

That means: slop a ton of water onto the page

and swirl some beautiful colors into it. 

That may also mean spraying and spritzing more

water here and there to help push color where I

want it to go. 

Both pages handled loads of 'wet' with no problem.

I had a little bend to the paper, but an overnight under 
my iPad took care of that completely.

No pilling, no issues, and smooth tangling!

 This particular type of journal makes the pages

really easy to work on.

You just pull them off those discs,

work on them, then pop them back in.

Easy peasy.

And the Harmony handled all that off and on

stuff very well!

I used Winsor Newton watercolor tubes on

this one page. They worked very well. 

I just don't have many colors in that brand.

Tangling still to come.

 Continuing to work wet into wet,

I pulled out some QoR Watercolor tubes and

made a couple backgrounds.

 And once they were dry,

I added tangles and highlights and shading.

All worked super duper on the Harmony. 

 I won't show you the before and after

on all the pieces, I just thought these

were pretty both ways!

Still using the QoR tubes here. 

Lots and lots of water and using a water brush

and spray bottle in addition, 

and the Harmony held up great! 

I did have a little warping, but again -

a night under the weight of my iPad and it

was all wonderful the next morning. 

 A different type of watercolor on these two -

Cosmic Iridescent Shimmering Watercolor

from Joggles.

These pigment watercolor cakes have bits of mica

to give shimmery highlights.

Hard to photograph but they are there!

Mostly I sprayed the paper first, then used a

water brush to pick up and dispense the cosmic color.

So pretty! And absolutely no warping of page,

no pilling, no issues.

On the pages where I used graphite to add shading -

I had no problems with the paper.

I wasn't sure what to expect when I shaded and 

blended on top of color, on top of paper

But it all worked fine!

 Watercolor worked great!

And it should because the Harmony was

made for watercolor.

So I thought, let's try something else.

Because that is what I do.

I pulled out some bottles of

Daler Rowney Liquid Acrylics.

Still wet media.

I tend to use these just like watercolors, 

so I started with a layer of water . . . 

 . . . that I added the liquid acrylics to with

an eyedropper. 

I used a heat gun to push the color

and dry. These colors are so bright and beautiful!

For this little page, I went with a mixed media

idea. Bits of magazine collage were added

with Dina Wakley's clear gesso.

I also used Jane Davenport's mermaid markers

for some extra color,

some stencils from Joggles, Posca Paint Pens

and a couple gelly roll pens.

There is a lot more that could be done with this

mixed media page, at a later time. 

 Still using the Daler Rowney Liquid Acrylics

with a whole lot!!! of water!

 I liked the results so much I had to make

a couple more pages. 

For this one I just sprayed the page first,

then added the color . . .

 . . . and then the tangles. 

Love, love, love how this one turned out!

And one last Daler Rowney page.

I mostly put color along one horizontal edge,

and tilted the page and let the color run down.

Awesome!

Harmony and Daler Rowney -

a match made in heaven!

This is one sheet - front and back.

I haven't drawn on these yet.

Not sure what pens to use because the surface

feels strange.

That would be because of what this product is.

Also from Cosmic Shimmer, 

these are called Chalk Cloud Blending Ink.

They do have a chalky feel to them.

And I love the smoothness they have.

I used a blending tool to rub these colors on 

in a circular motion. A whole lot of rubbing 

with a felt pad to get the color on and 

blended. The colors are not as vibrant as I

normally work with and I guess I'm ok with that. 

Hahahaha!

They worked very well on the Harmony.

Easy to spread, and since there was very little

'wet' I did not have any change in the paper.

 Moving on, I changed to 

Golden High Flow Acrylics.

I put down a layer of water first, then mixed

the Golden color into the water and moved

it around by tilting and tipping.

 Fun to tangle on and I promise -

I can't tell a bit of change in this page

texture-wise or surface-wise.

Feels just like it did before I added color. 

Here is the back side. 

I haven't drawn on this one yet. 

I may just enjoy it like it is for now.

I used Golden Fluid Acrylics on this one.

Not as much water was involved, but

basically the same techniques.

Win/win all around.

While I was working on this little journal,

I received some new pens in the mail.

So I had to try them out.

No wet media, sorry, but just because the

Harmony is a watercolour paper

doesn't mean that is all you can use it for. 

And honestly, 

I don't recall where I got these pens.

They just showed up one day and I was like "what???"

From Pilot, they are called 

Hi-Tec-C Maica.

0.3 mm tips. 

12 beautiful colors!

This photo doesn't do them justice.

And of course they worked well on the paper,

the nibs caught a little in the texture 

but hey! this is watercolour paper.

 This last group of pages are all related.

I used Tombow dual brush pens and basically

used them as watercolor.

Such a fun technique.

I have a quick YouTube tutorial here. 

This technique rends such beautiful results . . .

every single time!

 And I guess you get an idea of which colors

I like best. Hehehehe!

Here are a couple more I haven't tangled on yet.

 I started by saying I had 16 pages - 

that is 32 work surfaces. 

Honestly, I could have kept on tangling -

and I will -

but I wanted to get this review posted.

So.

What did I think of the

Harmony Hot Pressed Watercolour Paper

from Hahnemühle?

I love it!

The block came with 12 sheets.

Just 4 pages gave me this 16 page book

with 32 work surfaces.

That's a lot of bang for your buck!

If you are not familiar with these blocks,

they are glued on all four sides.

The purpose of that is so your paper dries flat.

If you use a load of water like I do,

that is a really wonderful feature.

I just let the page totally dry, then slip

a metal palette knife inside the one little

open slot they give you, and gently slide the edge

around all four surfaces which removes the page

from the block.

Easy peasy. 

Just be sure it's totally dry first.

This paper took all the media I threw at it.

Like a boss!

No problems at all.

What little warping I got with the wettest pages

was easily remedied with an iPad.

And if you have an iPad, you know it isn't

very heavy.

All these pages have flattened out easily.

With all the water, rubbing, scrubbing,

heating, blowing, pushing and pulling -

I had no pilling anywhere, no feathering,

no damage of any kind to the paper.

So do I want you to have some awesome

Hahnemühle Harmony Hot Pressed

Watercolour Paper?

Of course I do!

Where can you get some?

You can get it at Art Materials. 

And even better - it's on sale at

Art Materials!

Want to see a flip through of my project?
Maybe this will work.
Fingers crossed.