I’m a paper hoarder, I have lots of different textures and like to experiment and save money of course. Art shops have decent clear outs going on all the time so why not load up come the sales?
Art materials like produce, expire.
This has been the source of one of my biggest frustrations, I’d lay out seemingly new watercolour sheets only to start painting and for the water to get sucked into the paper like kitchen roll and leak out the other side. The colours would look dull, didn’t spread and act oily, I wondered whether I had lost my arty mojo — what a relief to finally understand that the treatment of the paper had degraded over time.
I learnt about this only recently from this great post from Featherjoy.com which explains what to expect when the ’sizing’ of the paper starts to fail. I feel like art materials especially paper should have a clear production date wherever it is sold. I’d be very wary buying watercolour paper in the sales now.
What I’ve decided to do is just blob around, paint some silly things and repurpose the spoiled paper for other uses. Perhaps making ugly characters to make into bunting to traumatise my sister on her 31st birthday.