The paper we use is lightly beaten cotton rag. We couched several sheets onto the vacuum table. We distressed and rearranged them to give them an all over texture with irregular contours and negative spaces. We drew with pastel and charcoal on the still wet, lightly vacuumed sheet.
shaped and embossed drawing paper, thick and textured
We’ve been making pastel drawings on store-bought for a while now. We wondered how we could bring the drawing and the sculpture together. Making our own drawing paper seemed a start.
To get some openings and cool contours, we broke up the sheets by couching askew on scraps of pellon. Then we crudely perforated them with finger tapping. Finally, we’d couch what was on the pellon elsewhere on the construction site.
a sheet, freshly couched and manipulated before vacuuming.
pastels on wet paper: you’ll never go back
After about 1 minute of vacuum table, we began to draw on the still sodden paper with soft pastels which glide on creamily. The black has a particularly crisp woodcut look as the stick lightly pulls across the textures we’ve impressed into the paper.
Our “sheet” is about 42” x 54” and constructed from three 18” x 24” and two 8.5” x 11” deckle boxed sheets of cotton rag.
We further distressed the surface by impressing some things during vacuuming. The drawing took several days to dry.
To see another drawing made the same way, go to paper objects.
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Pastels on wet paper dry with rich variety - in places looking part of the paper or a wash of color and elsewhere the pastel sits on the surface as if block printed. The pastels need less fixative when applied this way.