Page Options

I have fun playing around with different drawing papers when I'm working in my art journals. Here are a few options:

--Watercolor paper--

A great choice for watercolor or acrylic paint, inks, markers, and collage work as the paper is heavy.

--Card stock paper--

Great for general drawing, inks, colored pencils and collage. You might be able to use acrylic and watercolor paint as long as it's not too wet. The water will cause some warping.

--Brown butcher paper--

A light to mid-weight butcher paper will handle acrylics nicely, but does not support watercolors without wrinkling. Inks and markers, either permanent or water based will typically have some bleed through. Colored pencil and crayon are fun to experiment with on the butcher paper. I especially like using white and very pale colors as they show up nicely against the brown.

--Sketch or text weight paper--

Good if you just want to write, sketch, draw using inks, crayons or colored pencils. Not so good for painting or adding elements to the pages because the paper is too thin to handle the water content or the weight. I've had success with a glue stick adhering thin elements such as magazine pictures.

--Charcoal or Canson drawing papers--

Image from Jerry's Artarama, where I get a lot of my papers

I love these papers because they come in so many wonderful, fun colors and encourage me to play. Great for lightweight work using pencils, inks, crayon or pastels.