Mixed Media Basics: Making Hand Painted Paper

1. Paint Paper Intro: - Hi . I'm very excited to be back in my studio and bringing you a class on how to hand print papers. There's a class that I wanted to bring to you for some time now. And so I'm glad to finally be able Teoh to show you this technique we're going to talk about, uh, the process, how I use it in a variety of collage pieces. I'm going to show you some of those finished pieces, and then and we're gonna also talk about the supplies. 2. Paint Paper Supplies: I'm gonna be using ah, gel plate, which is the basis for our printing process. And so there's a number of manufacturers that sell gel plates, but this is kind of what it looks like. I believe it's a silicon cone product. Um, and you can use either side. Um, we're also going to be using today craft paint. Uh, craft pain is fine. Um, you don't have to spend a lot of money to experiment with this and have fun. Um, I'm actually having my granddaughter watch this video so that she can, um she could learn how to do this as well. So it's a great activity for kids, but it certainly has, um, more artistic application. I do tend to use fluid acrylics. I've even used, uh, acrylic paint out of the tube. If you're gonna use acrylic paint out of the tube, you might want a water that down a bit for this process. Uh, I use a Breyer, and that's what we used to spread the paint onto the jelly plate. So we get a nice even application. Um, and then in terms of making designs on the paper, I have a variety of stencils so glibly using a stencil today and then this piece, they actually sell combs that have different kind of teeth that that produced different designs on the plate. But this is the comb that I'll be using today. I also use a variety of papers some my like better than others in terms of how they can be incorporated into collage work. But you could certainly use a variety of paper. I've used everything from this is a piece of Xerox paper with sheet music that was Iraq's onto it. And then I print over it so that you get some of the sheet music showing through the pattern. Uhm, this is just some ah letterhead type paper, so a little bit heavier. I've used scrapbooking paper, um, and something also called deli paper. And the deli paper is a little bit more translucent. So if you have line work or something on the canvas and you use this over it, some of the line work will will show through. So that's kind of how I use the deli paper on. And then my favorite paper to use, particularly for collage work, is, uh, the Japanese rice paper, and you can get that your local art store. They carry it online on places like Amazon, but the rice paper actually has two sides to it. There's a more shiny side, it's less absorb it. And then there's the mat side that is more absorbent. Um, I print on both sides. What? I like that if I print on the shiny side, I can actually paint on the absorb inside. And that shows through, um, shiny side the mat size a little bit more absorbent. So sometimes I tend to like that when I want a deeper, heavier coverage of paint. But I would recommend that you experiment with the rice paper just in terms of what what you like best in terms of the look of the two sides. 3. Paint Paper Techniques: All right. So I have my supplies set out on my art table. And as you can see, I have the job plate here, and that's that's gonna be in the mainframe here so that you get the best view of what I'm doing. And I'm going to kind of walk you through that as I'm doing it. Um, what I usually do is you can use any number of colors on the plate, but I like to use a variety of colors. Usually I use one or two or three. Um, for this first demonstration, I'm going to go ahead and use three. And I just apply some dots of color of the craft pain on the plate. Uh, and so little yellow down. Now we're gonna add a bigger dollop of green. Um, and you don't want your coverage to be too thick, So I'm gonna put out a little red in here, and now I'm gonna take my Breyer, and we're going to just read the, um, paint onto the plate. Now, this is a little bit sicker than I actually like it. Um, and I do also want to explain that I do work, um, with the excess and let me see if I can get that into the frame for you so that you can get an idea of how I used the excess. So I believe you could see the stencil. I'm gonna bring it a little bit closer. There we go. So there's distance away and here is a piece of my rice paper. And so I'm actually going to put stencil down, actually underneath my paper and I'm going to read this across, and I don't know if you could tell that I get a little bit of the pattern onto the paper. So it's not just the plate that I'm using. I try to make good use of all the materials that I have available, but let's go ahead and get the plate back into the, um, into the frame. And I've now got my comb. And so I'm gonna comb just some stripes on to the plate and then take my paper. I mentioned there's an absorb inside and there's a shine inside. I'm going because the paint is this stick. I'm actually gonna use the shiny side, so let's try that and you just lay it over the plate and you run your hand across it. You can also use, and I didn't show you this. But you can also use something called a Breyer, and that's just to rub over the plate to get it kind of an even application. But you don't have to have that. You could certainly just use your hand and then we lift it and there's are striped prints, and I'll put that aside to dry. And, as you can tell when I show you some of the finished papers, this is a layering process. But if you can see there's still quite a bit of paint left on my plate, so I'm actually going to go in with This is a piece of paper that I had printed the other day, and I'm going to go in and use this piece and see if I don't pick up some of that left over paint onto and so you can see I've created stripes over my original design. Now I'm going to go ahead again, and you can let you gonna You can go and I like to use a baby wipe to clean up, but you can go ahead and, um, use a wet cloth and clean this off. But what I like to do is leave this kind of ghost paint goes print paint on the plate and go back in with more paint and you'll see that it does tend to create a little more texture . I'm only gonna use two colors this time. I'm going to use the the yellow a little bit of the read and you'll see I'm trying to do a little bit of a lighter application this time and go ahead and spread that on the And now I'm going to use the stencil on what I do is I rate Lay that right on top and I'll take actually will taken initial print again on the rice paper. This time I'm gonna use the absorb inside. I'm gonna lay that down right here and then I'm gonna rub over, particularly into the areas of the stencil where I want that paint to come through. You have a little bit of time. It takes a while before this pain actually dries up. And even if it does, if you had a little bit you can actually spray it with water bottle and reactivated a little bit, but so here's Here's the print that comes off of that stencil. But what I like about this is this I'll print over that, and that buildup of print upon print is what gives you the texture. So, um and then I'll even lift this stencil, and I'm gonna bring that back into the frame again, and we're going to see if we don't get anything off of this stencil onto the rice paper. So lay that stencil down. And I grew up over the top to see if any of that excess we'll transfer on to the paper. So let's see if we got much. Sometimes we don't. Sometimes we do. Yeah, we got a nice another ghost print off of this stencil. Now let's go back. This was the jelly plate where the jail plate where I, um, took that print off of the stencil. So there still should be a bit of a design. Uh, we're gonna lay again, just in case you're interested. I'm gonna print to the, um, more absorb inside. So I lay the paper down, we rub lightly over it and let's see what we pick up. So I think you can see, we have the stencil print in here. So again, I'm gonna take another piece of paper. Okay, so this is where we left off after the last print. I still have a little bit of paint on the plate, which again I could choose to clean off. But sometimes I do like the buildup of paint definitely gives you much more textural feeling to your hand printed paper this time. I'm just taking some of the the red, um, and let's get a little bit more on there. There we go. And, um, I can't going to that. Um, wait, You need a little bit more? Yes. Go with a little bit happier application. Okay, so we've got three the coverage there, and I'm taking a piece of paper that I have had started printing on. Um, already and I have a slightly different stencil here. I'm gonna use this shapes stencil and place that down plate and then place my paper over. And like I said, I'm going to try. This is a bit of a heavier papers, so it requires a little bit more rubbing to make sure that you pick up the paint below the stencil. and if I wanted to, I can again crab furnishing to trying to make sure I lift up much as I can. So let's see if we were able to lift up some of the we were See, we've got the design. Oh, that that's over the other layers of printing that I've already done. So that's really what the process is. It's just this process of layering, Um, and getting the most out of, Yeah, the inks and paints that you're using. I'm actually going to try and pick up a little goes here again, So let's see how that works for this. I'm definitely gonna use the absorb inside of my rice paper, cause because I don't have much paint left on this plate, But we're going to see if we pick something up from it. So you'll see we didn't get We didn't get too much up with that, But let me go ahead and try something else. So you're not going to really be able to see this. But I went ahead and I put a little bit of water on my Breyer and we're gonna run that over the top of this leftover paint. That's here and we're going to see if we can't pick up some of this design, so I don't know how well you can see that. But we did. We've got a little bit of this dental design, and now we've got what we what we have is a nice light background that we can go in and print over. So there's lots of ways to make make a very interesting layered design on your papers. So I hope this has been informative. I hope youll experiment and have fun. Um, it's just amazing. The, uh, Adam wealth of designs that you can make try different stencils. There's a lot of anything that's textural that you can put on the plate you can print with . So enjoy. Have fun and experiment. And I appreciate you watching the video