Tip #9 - Ways to Modify Your Handmade Paper Qualities For Art-making

12 pieces of advice that I wish I knew when starting out as a beginner papermaker, with May Babcock, artist and founder of Paperslurry.com 👋. Coming to you weekly on Tuesdays.

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Hey it's May,

So say you’ve made a solid stack of delicious handmade paper, complete with ‘deckled’ edges and a beautiful surface.

But, you want to use the paper in art-making processes, like ink drawings for example. How might you improve the paper for those techniques?

Let’s back up first with a key piece of advice:

The quality of your handmade paper is determined mostly by your decisions in how you made the paper to begin with.

This starts with your fiber choice and source, and continues through with your decisions on processing the fiber into paper: pulping, additives, forming, pressing, and drying. You control the properties of your paper before it is even finished, and these properties determine its suitability for specific art-making techniques.

To put all this into perspective, there’s a whole book dedicated to just making paper for specifically printmaking processes like relief, intaglio, screen-printing, and lithography. For another example, there’s even a production handmade paper studios that makes paper specifically for origami artists.

Options to modify paper after it's dry

However, there are still options to modify your paper after it’s dry. Here are a few finishing options that come to mind:

Sizing

Sizing acts like a waterproofing raincoat for your paper, so that water-based media like ink doesn’t just ‘bleed’ and seep through your paper. There’s an endless amount of recipes and approaches to surface sizing your waterleaf paper, and there is even a whole issue of Hand Papermaking magazine dedicated to sizing.

Natural Dyes

Natural dyes are great for changing the color of your paper. Check out the free tutorial on how to use yellow onion skins, avocado skins, and pomegranate skins.

Burnishing

Burnishing is a way to ‘close up’ the pores on the paper surface. A smooth object can work for rubbing the paper surface smooth.

Calendaring

Calendaring is an option if you have access to a printmaking press. Just send the papers through the press to get a smoother surface. Or, before your paper is dry, you could wisely choose the drying surface to get a smooth surface. Paper fibers have a memory, so if you brush your wet, freshly made paper on plexiglass, the side facing the plexiglass will be smooth and shiny just like the plexiglass surface.

I hope that helps you get a better sense of the remarkable malleability handmade paper has for artists, calligraphers, printmakers, watercolorists, and more.

May

PS. If you're not sure why you're getting this email or how you got on the Paperslurry email list, read this. Also here's the last pieces of advice if you missed it.​

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May Babcock
Founder at paperslurry.com​
Artist at maybabcock.com​
Self-proclaimed paper geek