Monday, November 2, 2009

Alright all you artist types

I'm looking for a new paper to work with. Something that takes pencil well and scans cleanly without a whole lot of hassle. A little bit of tooth is a plus but not necessary. I've been working with rag marker paper and so far that's my favorite but it doesn't scan as well as I would like.

REVEAL YOUR SECRETS TO ME.


ALSO: I really like the paper inside the Moleskine watercolor sketchbooks. Anybody know if there are sheets available? Or what its closest cousin is?

Also, I've been continuing the near-daily posts on my blog, here. Here are a couple from last week:

9 comments:

Unknown said...

Little standard and little boring, i know.... Strathmore Bristol, smooth or vellum.

Erin McGuire said...

Ever tried strathmore aquarius? Not sure if it has all the qualities you mentioned but I found it really nice to work on for washes and watercolor stuff.

Kenny Callicutt said...

I like Cranes Crest. Takes a fountain pen and light washes really well. You can buy it at stationery stores for about 1/2 of the art store equivalent

Sam Bosma said...

I'm considering doing some ink work on the paper as well, and I go pretty heavy on the water, so weaker papers like bristol don't cut it, unfortunately. I've liked Strathmore watercolor paper to some degree in the past, so I might check out the aquarius. I've found that a lot of watercolor papers "give" a little too much under pencil pressure (strathmore's regular WC paper I have gives way too much) and you end up getting a bad texture on the scan.

Fabriano holds up to just about everything you can throw at it, but I've never tried it for just pencil work and it's super expensive, so I'm reluctant to pick up a $13 sheet if I'm not sure it'll work well.

Kenny Callicutt said...

I quite like the arches paper that comes in the peach blocks with the black siding. The smooth Press.. coldpress I hate, the texture of the paper is too strong. Ive found that IF I staple bristol down it takes abuse pretty well, are you just using tape?

LOOKA said...

AAAAAWESOME! Please go on makin' these for at least a hundred years! :)

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I liked the paper in those books too.
Have you ever tried the TORCHON grain?

Fabriano has a lot of choices to go from, I like the hotpress and printing papers, but can't think of any names except ROSASPINA which buckles quite a bit because it's light weight. I ended up with those and there are some other ones I want to try, like the 600gr hot press thing. That one is super pricey.

I love the Rives for pencils, as it takes the slightest lines and is good at producing light to heavy contrasts, as well as giving a good, subtle shine to ink - even in larger areas. My only issue with that one is that it will rough up at the slighest rubber use. So I don't experiment around on it and use it for clean finishes only...

Whitney Pollett said...

woah! These are really awesome!

Unknown said...

I'm pretty late to the paper party, but I'll add my two cents.

I dig the same Arches block paper that Kenny suggested. I soak it and staple it into a firm board and I can pretty much treat it like my redheaded stepchild from that point. When it dries you can cut it out flat and it scans like whoa.

Unknown said...

Nice character design !