If you go to a museum, Homer’s watercolors are usually described as having been made on “off-white wove paper”. Sometimes the fact that it has a watermark (manufacturer’s name) is mentioned, but never is that name revealed. “Wove paper” is the way paper is made today. Early paper is described as “laid paper.” The difference has to do with the screen on which the paper pulp is dried. Laid paper is dried on a fairly loose screen and leaves a grid-mark on the paper whereas wove paper does not.
Water color papers come in sheets or blocks (see below) usually in 140 pound or 300 pound weight and three surface treatments: hot pressed (very smooth), cold press (with a texture), and rough (with a pronounced texture.) In England cold press paper is sometimes called “Not”, that is “not hot pressed.” A long and informative article on watercolor paper can be found here.
From our point of view it is better to know that Homer used cold-pressed paper specifically machine-made for watercolors which was combined into watercolor blocks.
To be specific Homer for the most part used machine-made paper made by J. Whatman in medium or heavy weigh. He seems to have used this paper in blocks, that is paper that has been prevented from buckling from the application of juicy washes by having all four side bound by gum to the sheets of paper below it and to a thick cardboard backing. (Paper will still buckle but not as much.) The size he used in the early years was 10 x 14 inches (probably 10 by 15, the “quarter sheet” with an inch cut off later in the studio) and later he went up to 20 x 15 1/2 inches and sometimes 22 x 17 1/2. These size blocks, more or less, can still be obtained but the company, I believe, is now called “Saunders Waterford” . See here for a description. It seems to be the premium paper endorsed by the Royal Watercolour Society of England. It is marginally more expensive than Arches. I have not myself found it in block form. It is available on-line from many suppliers. Homer trimmed his final watercolors for compositional reasons, so many of the dimensions that are seen when shown in a book or museum are not exactly the same as those mentioned above. Also the dimensions are measured on the block on which the paper is made and it shrinks a little bit.
The closest you are going to get today to Homer’s sizes are the Quarter Sheet (11×15), the Half Sheet (15 x 22) and what is called The Demy (17 1/2 x 22 1/2) (which I have never seen for sale). What we are using here is the British Imperial system for paper dimensions. A full sheet, available in all art stores, is 22 x30. Then there is the half sheet (15 x22) and the quarter sheet (11 x 15).
Homer did not wet his paper expect for a few experiments. He started with a dry wash which left tiny pinpricks of white showing through. This is said to create a “sparkle.”
So from the point of view of painting like Homer just about any cold pressed watercolor block in the sizes mentioned should do. Don’t wet it, just start laying in washes.
I should mention that John Singer Sargent also used watercolor blocks. I do so because there is a lot of gadgets for sale for holding paper in the field that wont help you to do a painting any better than these two guys.
