What kind of paper do we use!

It has been a while since we got a request from a reader to do a post on different types of papers available for painting and/or crafts. We have given this one some thought and debated if we should give a list of different paper or craft types. Since the topic is wide and more details are available on the net, we decided that we will basically share our experience with paper and how we have been using it!

Smriti:

Quilling/Punch art - I started with cutting regular printer/copy paper for making the quilling strips. They come in a variety of colors and have the same color on both sides. I did do a lot of research on what weight of paper would result in great looking coils, but that was extremely confusing for me. For punch art, I have experimented way more than quilling. I have concluded that different punches need different papers. Some can punch through even cardstock/scrapbooking paper, whereas some need thinner papers. Printer/copy paper works well, but if I need to do some more intricate embossing on the paper I go for a slightly thicker paper than printer/copy paper.

myquillingplanet.blogspot.com

A lot of times I would go to the store and would end up getting the wrong paper, the result of that being I have a stack of papers which I can’t use for quilling. Good part about being an artist - nothing goes waste!! ;-) So the best I can say is to play around ...and don’t forget that when you do experiment, share it with us here

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For madhubani paintings I have always used handmade paper. Some problems I face with that is the inks I use for coloring blot on it, due to the fibres. If you use acrylic/craft paint you can use just about any paper/canvas.

Shamoni:

My experiments with paper started through school and with plain white chart papers for drawing and coloured marble paper squares for craft. Over the years I have experimented a bit with paper as a base for my paintings or as a medium for my craft.

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Painting and sketching - Like I mentioned when I started with my paintings and these were the days of basic poster colours and pencil colours or crayon pastels I have extensively used the basic sketch book. The basic sketchbook which I believe should be anywhere between 70gsm to 120gsm*. The thinner one (70-90gsm) is usually thin enough to only allow pencil or pastels and water col ours etc. may tear the paper, but a thicker one (100-120gsm) suffices for all paint mediums. As I advanced further I did experiment more with the paper thickness, texture and colour. I have predominantly used white to cream tone papers. Thin paper (25gsm or what we may know as butter paper) for tracing, slightly thicker and minor texture (70gsm) for sketching and rough notes, ticker paper (100gsm) for sketching, ink, col our and the thickest (anywhere beyond 120gsm) for individual art work and water cooler since this paper is very absorbent. I have used acrylic colours on papers above 100gsm but for oil colours I have predominantly used canvas. Canvas can be used either as fabric, which can be stretched on a mount board or you can get ready mounted canvas board or sheets from your local art stores. I have also used handmade paper for paintings and sketches and these can give an even better effect to the finished work. You need to choose your paper depending on your paint medium as water col ours required a thick and rough paper while ink thinner and rough while pastels thin and smooth and so on. Understand the relationship between your medium and paper and that shall come with some experimentation and practice.

(*Note: In the metric system, the mass per unit area of all types of paper and paperboard is expressed in terms of grams per square meter (g/m²) or commonly knows as (gsm). This is a common measure of paper thickness in countries following the Metric system. In the U.S.A, paper is measured in Standard American English Pounds (lbs) & 1 lbs, = 1.4802 gsm

www.paperplusoutlet.com

Cards and Craft- I started using the colouful marble paper and I would still like to use it for certain projects but you can be very experimental with paper you use for craft projects. For cards I used to use what was commonly known as chart paper (these are large sheets we get at stationary stores) and cut them into sizes required. These were much thinner papers though hence now I use card stock papers which are thicker and come in various colours, textures and prints there by making the cards firmer and more interesting. I can layer different card stocks together, punch them, stamp them or even colour and sketch on them! I also use a lot of paper we see in our household and scraps I save from either invitation or birthday cards, magazines, interesting chocolate wrappers and so on. The same applies for craft projects as well where I make used of card stock as a base most of the times and add other embellishments to it.

There is of course much more to paper and its uses in art and craft and we have only but scratched the surface of this topic through our experience. There is certainly a lot more to know about paper and you can get on to Google and Bing to help you with your search. Here are some good links to get you started!

· Trueart

· Drawsketch

· EHow

· Thinkcrafts

We hope this post was helpful and if you have any more queries do drop in a line cause we love to hear from you!

 - Smriti & Shamoni

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