Under paper

This week the art challenge at DLP was to use under paper. At first I didn't know what that was, like a lot of other people. It turns out that it is the paper you spread out under your artwork to catch the extra paint that spills off the edge of the page. I hadn't thought of keeping it before because it doesn't look that great to me and I would prefer to make nicer paper to use but as my goal this year is to try new things I decided to give it a go.

I didn't have very much paper to choose from on my desk but managed to find a few pieces of copy paper that I had used under my pages and some of the paper towel that I blot my brushes on. The prompt this week was 'what lies beneath' which made me think of the ocean. I found a great quote so made a little under sea scene.

The copy paper with acrylics and watercolor on it was easy to use. The paper towel that had mainly watercolor on it did not work out so well. When I glued the towel to the page the water in the glue made the colors run and it looked really dull and muddy when it dried. I scribbled on some Inktense pencils in the same color as the original towel and wet them to make the colors bright again. I won't be saving paper towel to use in my future projects and only really attractive under papers. I would prefer to use gelatin plate printed papers instead.

My writing exercise for this week was to use a paint brush to do the lettering. I found that fairly easy to do but the color I used didn't stand out against the similar background so I used a fine-liner to go around each letter. Looking at it now I think I should have outlined with black to match the rest of the page. I will leave now and go do that. See you next week.