I love found, aged paper. It provides such a nice starting point to draw or write onto. I’ve also always struggled to work in brand new shiny white papered sketchbooks. The pressure is just too much! I can’t do it! It all goes wrong. My hand turns to jelly and none of my drawings work. AT ALL.
So to take away the FEAR of a 'blank sheet of paper' I work on reclaimed, scavenged, pilfered from the recycling bin, worn out pages from an old book of maps, ‘found’, pre loved sheets of paper. This could be anything from the back-of-an-envelope, brown paper packaging or 'old school exercise-book' lined (and occasional dotty) 'parchment'.
If you’ve bought any of my notebooks or dOOdling books you’ll know all about this as they are filled with ‘pre-loved’ papers too. I rifled through all of my found-paper boxes, and had sheets and sheets of them beautifully reprinted onto 135gsm uncoated recycled paper. It's perfect for writing on and works well in these notebooks. I’ve even found myself regularly taking to these sketchbooks to draw directly into (!!) as it seems far less scary to doodle onto a sheet of non-bright-white paper.
Here are some favourites if you’d like to have a go! They make GREAT pressies too!
What do you like to draw on?
Happy dOOdling and happy Sunday.