Following on from my previous post I am looking at how we can cut down or replace cling-film as a paint texture-making technique. Clearly, any ‘single use’ material that we use instead is not ideal. Even if it is supposedly recyclable – the recycling plants cannot cope with the quantities of ‘stuff’. However, if we re-use rather than buying new material (plastic/paper/other) that cuts down the waste a bit. Ideally, we wouldn’t use plastic at all, but currently most supermarkets and shops make it difficult to escape from. For the time being I am suggesting that we re-use these materials as far as possible if we cannot avoid them. So instead of throwing away – I now look at our bins with an eye to what can be used in my studio. When (shock horror) I discovered some plastic-wrapped apples in our fridge that someone had bought I collected the wrapping for the studio and will trial these along with other ‘baddies’ as I rescue them.
The re-using plastic option is clearly only a minimal improvement over actually buying a roll of it so I have been looking at whether different kinds of papers could be used as an alternative instead. I researched whether greaseproof or parchment paper has plastic in it: some do and some do not. If it is called baking paper, as far as I can gather, it may be coated with silicon. I also wondered about tracing paper which I don’t believe has plastic in it but need to find out for sure. I have some wax paper that I bought online that I already know makes interesting patterns – but different to the patterns we are used to with cling film.
In my recent dvd ‘Experimental watercolour workshop’ I have touched on this subject and in the dvd I suggest using tissue paper instead of cling film – the potentially crunchy kind used for craft- not the soft variety. It needs to be peeled off before the paint is completely dry to avoid it sticking.Eventually, I also want to explore whether different painting surfaces affect the ‘stickability of the applied texture- making material.
To keep a certain degree of control in all the samples I used the same paper and paint colours. I used Saunders Waterford Not paper as this is a surface that I have often applied cling film to in the past. The colours are French Ultramarine with Quinacrodine Gold watercolour painted in random ‘wet in wet’ splodges. The paper does slightly vary in size between samples because I used small random ‘offcuts’ of paper to avoid waste. The texture-making materials were all applied immediately whilst the paint was still wet. Some of them did not cling to the surface at all so had to be weighted down flat with books until dry and so these were mostly not photographed until finished.
To be continued- Read #plastic-free 3 for the findings!
