I bet they had nights like these - they must have, right?

Re: stretching paper - kinda? This was in my sketchbook so the tape was really just to give it a border, but when I'm using a single sheet I'll tape it to a board but not usually stretch it. I used to go the whole hog and wet the paper, use brown tape and all that, but it takes so long and then I watched people on YT not bothering and their paper was still ok at the end - so, why bother? I think it only works if you're using decent watercolour paper though. 300gsm/140lb (and cotton).