Thursday, December 31, 2009

Painting Paper for Paper Paintings


Making the Most of Art Store Papers
I have mentioned in the past that I gave up using colored art store papers due to light fast or fading issues. Now I only buy white papers and paint them my own colors with artists fluid acrylics.

I do however, still like to utilize the printed patters that often come on art store purchased papers. This week I painted some papers with gold printing and iridescent patterning. What's fun about painting these types of papers is that the pattern resists the acrylic paint and so you still have the benefit of the printed pattern PLUS the benefit of your own painted color palette.

The gold patterned paper started out brown, I painted some brown, some red, some blue and some purple. I stayed with dark colors because the paper started out dark. The iridescent paper started out white, so it was a wonderful starting point for any color I wanted! This paper was thin, so I used sheet music underneath it to catch the extra paint, and the end result was a bonus!

I purchased these papers in person at Binders Art Supply when I was in Atlanta, you can buy these papers online as well at places like DickBlick.com, I like them because they take PayPal.

2 comments:

  1. Elizabeth, thanks for this informative post! I'm still soaking up information to help me on my next painting! At dickblick.com, I saw a mulberry paper sample pack, is that a good paper to try?

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  2. yes, mulberry is a nice paper, it might come in colors but you are going to want to paint it so you are sure it will not fade. mulberry usually has some nice fibers running through it and I think it's thicker than rice paper, so mix and match it with other papers of different weights!

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