How I Illustrate: Painting on different papers/textures

I love painting on different paper surfaces, it gives a different look and texture to the painted areas, and you can leave some areas unpainted. This article describes working on hand made textured paper.

This book, Hootenanny! came about in a serendipitous way from some personal work that I posted on my blog, that a commissioning editor saw and liked.*

For the original images of owls I had painted on brown cardboard, leaving the background to show, using it as one of the colours of the images, and painting both lighter and darker than the surface. You can see some of these small, square originals in the photographs.

For the book that was commissioned, featuring jazzy owls on their way to a party, I had to source some natural paper, to reproduce the effect of my originals.
​It was quite hard to find paper big enough to paint a double page spread on though, and had to make sure I bought enough in one go for the whole book in case the colour changed over the batch.
( picture books are usually 32 pages - usually 12-14 dps (double page spreads), and endpapers, title page etc)

After a lot of trials I found a suitable Khadi paper with flecks of fibre in it, which gave it a pleasant texture and broke up the flatness. (I also have a drawer full of reject brown papers that weren't quite right!) I was looking for a paper that was mid tone, so I could leave the paper unpainted in areas, using it as one of the colours of the final artwork.
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For the final artwork I used Luminance Pencils to draw the outlines,  and Winsor and Newton gouache for the painted areas. The Khadi paper has a nice 'tooth' - texture. The Pencil crayon line is broken up by this texture, giving a pleasing effect. Very smooth paper would give a different line. 

I like to paint in a deliberately patchy way, with light and dark shades of the same colour.I don't like to have flat colour, though that is possible with gouache, which is a lovely thick watercolour paint with a creamy consistency, and was originally developed for design work. It is not waterproof but you can, with care, paint over it.

Lately I have been experimenting with acrylic gouache, with has different qualities, but that is for another post.

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*Hootenanny written by Kimberly Ainsworth written by Jo Brown, published by Simon and Schuster.


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