so in response to This post and because my first rendering teacher was phenomenal, and taught us not just how the medium works, but how it’s made, I’m just gonna infodump everything I know about traditional mediums for you here. I know too much, so I gotta split this up. This post is just about paper.
you should be choosing your paper based on the tooth, aka, the little bumps. and let’s start with water color paper.
First up. Rag edge is when the paper doesn’t have a sharp edge on it. Sometimes this means that the paper was hand made. Sometimes it means that the manufacturer is faking it. You can tell the difference by how crazy expensive it is. Sometimes it’s only on two edges because they’re doing long rolls and cutting to sheet size. if all four sides are rag edge, they’re probably going to be more expensive, and are usually found in flat files in art stores.
There are hot press water color papers that have a fine tooth and let you do modern looking works. This is made by taking the paper pulp, laying it in, and then basically hot ironing it until its gone smooth. This means that you can work over hot press paper a lot more before the paper starts to pill.
Cold press water color paper has more ooth and more visible little lumps of paper pulp, and lets you do more classical water color looks. This is like when you take a shirt out of the basket and realize its wrinkled but you just try to smooth them out rather than grab the ironing board. I love this look, but if you go back too many times to the same spot, or if you push too hard/work too wet, you might start tearing up the pulp, and then that spot will always look different than the rest.
You’ve also got rough finish water color paper that never gets pressed, so the pulp gets laid and levelled, but never ironed out. And that means that you’d better not need to rework things because ooh boy but that stuff will pill up if you work it too hard.
More heat in the finishing means that there’s more of a shell or skin on the face of the paper. That is how you get the smoother look, and yes, it is great for inks and thin, staining colors. But! if you work through that skin on hot press, it’s over. You might, maybe, be able to hide that mistake on rougher paper, but on hot press once the page goes rough, you’re done.
But, Strife, you’re thinking, how come some papers *cough*Arches*cough* are so freaking expensive? Honestly, it’s a brand name with a history to it mostly. But, They also have fewer impurities in the paper pulp, and they take color better. More expensive water color papers do tend to stay flat better when wet.
Which brings me to the next point.
Watercolor blocks. You know how watercolor paper comes with all the edges stuck together except for a 2″ section that’s sometimes on a corner? That’s on purpose, and you aren’t supposed to take a sheet off until the art is done. What it’s doing is holding the thing tight and in place so it can’t warp so much. Then, after you’re done, you run a stick (I use a butter knife) around the outside to separate it.
If you don’t have a block, and just have loose sheets - tape them down, all the way around the outside, to a rigid surface. Don’t be shy. Don’t just get the corners. Get the entire border. And if this is a large sheet/you’re having trouble with it. Mist the back with spray glue before you tape the edges. You’ll get such a better product if you aren’t fighting warping.
So. Other papers than water color.
What a lovely illustration, but, feel free to ignore it’s recommendations whenever you want. Especially if you’re doing mixed media. What matters is that you know what you’re working on, and you know whether you want to preserve the tooth of the paper or not. (think about when you press hard with colored pencils and it goes super smooth - you’re ironing out of the tooth of the page) Do you want paper where you have a single plane, or do you want to have all those peaks and valleys to work with?
Anyway, non watercolor paper types:
Tracing Paper, sometimes called onion paper or trace is for tracing. obviously. it’s translucent, toothier than you expect it to be, hates erasers, and has a distinct sound when you crumple it up. It’s also useful as sheeting between pages so graphite or whatever doesn’t transfer. It’s made by either using really selective materials and keeping everything very thin, OR by making a normal type paper that’s kind of like printer paper, and then dipping it in acid for minute to eat some of it away.
Newsprint is a mild tooth, fine pulp, really thin paper. We use it for sketching because it makes it almost impossible to go back and erase anything. The paper with wrinkle or tear if you’re not super careful. This is why it’s the go to for 30 second sketches. It’s cheap, but it’s not for your masterpiece.
Then there’s sketch paper which tends to have a mild tooth, fine pulp, and is usually around 100lb this stuff is the work horse for most artists. I have about a dozen notebooks like this kicking around. you can work inks, graphite, colored pencils, you can erase for a long while without breaking the skin of the paper. there isn’t so much tooth that you’ll burnish it down and get a weird textureless spot. It comes in in a bazillion sizes, and is relatively cheap. I believe almost all of this runs through a hot press, but that’s for efficiency, not in a dedicated attempt to iron out all texture.
Next, there are bristol sheets - super super smooth, like, I want to just touch them all the time, great for marker and ink - that are made with really finely ground pulp and made with hot press rollers to get them as smooth as can be. These tend to be fairly heavy weight, kinda like super luxe cardstock. If you’re using a non-ink on them though, be careful you aren’t etching into it. If you press too hard, you’ll make your sketch permanently visible. On the other hand, if you’re playing with embossed sheets in mixed media, this stuff is the jam. It tends to be on the high cost end of mid range papers.
Vellum. Okay so. This name gets used for trace sometimes. Those people are wrong. Vellum is heavier weight than trace, and smoother. You can erase on it without destroying the thing, and it usually comes on a roll, because for ages it was used as an architecture drafting medium. Originally (pre-modern) vellum was a name for ultra thin sheets of calf skin that you could scrape away a layer if the word was wrong. Nowadays it’s a translucent paper product that can be great fun to work on. BUT. if it’s cheap to buy, it’s probably just tracing paper with a label change. As weird as this is, you can hear the difference between them.
Pastel paper is usually just watercolor paper in non-block form since there’s not a risk of water warping. However, what it should be is gritty. It’s not just ultra toothy, it should be rough - sandpaper rough. That’s because pastels need something to grab or they slide away. Keep in mind though, when you’re staring at the fancy color toned pastel blocks, that you can’t blend much on them. you put the pastel down on something too gritty, and that’s exactly where it’s gonna stay. These are made as cold press paper if memory serves, with an added mixture of grit that rises to the top.
Artagain papers are pretty much the same as sketch paper, but they have added fibers, usually a cotton or linen. This makes them tougher. They often have a color tone, or visible little strings in them.
Transfer paper is NOT the same as Trace paper. They are opposites. Don’t grab the wrong one. Transfer is a god-send if you need to sketch but the paper for the final piece is too expensive. It’s clean on one side, covered in graphite (and sometimes chalk) on the other, and you set it between your sketch and your fancy paper, with the graphite facing the final paper. Tape the whole thing in place so you can check your progress without ruining alignment. Then you (lightly) trace your sketch, and get just enough of the information down that you can do your thing without ruining a 60$ piece of paper. It’s also reusable several times before there’s not enough graphite left.
Okay, one last one, and technically it’s not paper, it’s plastic, but I’m mentioning it anyway. Plastic vellum is so.freaking.cool. It’s basically a clear sheet of acrylic with a thin skin of milking on the outside, on both sides that has enough tooth to it you can use it for most mediums. It takes colored pencil in this bizarre, high shine way, and gives you perfectly smooth marker lines. This stuff hates water color btw. But! What’s amazing about it is that because it’s translucent, you can do art on either side. Or, you can do layers of it and let things fade into faux mist.
That’s every type of art paper I can think of at the moment. let me know if you have questions.
