Recently, I was given a piece of brown packaging paper measuring 12 inches by 40 feet.........one complete, intact, 40 foot bit of paper that had arrived in someone's Amazon parcel. Now I have to tell you that the parcel contained a DVD.....seems like an unnecessary amount of protection but I decided to see if I could do something creative with that paper rather than just chuck it in the recycle bin.
I made a small book and began testing ideas.
It has a very slight waxy texture so working with Colour pencil is difficult. The paper doesn't really have any "tooth" so the colour pencil doesn't layer up well. You'll see with this Orchid, the drawing quickly became overworked and ended up with a shiny appearance
Like most of us, I have a lot of old pencils lying in drawers and such (probably abandoned by my kids) I thought I'd try using them on this paper. I must say that most of these pencils are not great quality so the results are not ideal. The magnolia was my second attempt and a little more successful. I have since found my tin of Prismacolor so I'll have to see if I have more success with those.
Then, I thought I'd try coating the paper with a thin layer of Gesso. This gives graphite and ink something to bite into. With the Gesso applied, I can draw with a graphite pencil, marks can be erased by gently lifting with a kneaded eraser and ink goes on fairly smoothly. I quite like the effect of the drawing sort of falling off the edge and fading into the brown. I will try a few more of this sort of drawing and possibly adding a light watercolour wash.
And since I'm playing with paper, I thought I'd see how well a papercut might work.
This worked much better than I had expected. I am certain more ideas will come to me and when they do, I'll share them here.
