The Biiiiiig Stashdown: Paper

[olivermoss]

Most of this must go. I will halve how much I have, at least. This is unmanageable. Toned paper and a few things I don't use will go in the Scrap pile, but most of this will go because I am going to use it up via practice. I can't toss good paper. This is a resource I am going to take advantage of.

Actually, laid out like that it doesn't look so bad. Partially because when I took this shot I missed 4 watercolor blocks, a small bristol, a large pad of isometric grid and two others scattered around. This is an unmanageable mess, especially with those spiral bindings making them hard to stack/store.

Now, some of these do have specific purposes. Some are full or nearly full. Some are from classes I did over ten years ago. A lot of the small ones are because every Sketchbox came with a little sketchbook, watercolor block or paper sample of some kind.

I need watercolor paper for watercolors. The Legion mini-blocks are really useful for project planning. Ideally, I should have all of their mini blocks. My favorite paper is Fluid, so I *might* be able to talk myself into streamlining down to only having Legion, Fluid and Handbook. Each paper works differently, so de-stashing the other brands would also have a mental benefit. It would make everything feel less chaotic. It would look neater, and it simplifies my process.

Actually, let's do a Science!





I used my beloved Daniel Smith Jadeite and also Da Vinci's cobalt-free light blue. I saturated the brush and trailed each side of the brush over the edge of the well. So, each brush stroke had a very similar load.

Anyway, my crappy cell phone shots don't really show the variations that great but, they vary a lot in texture, color cast (some cold, some warm, some neutral) and how thirsty the paper is.

Smooth green and, very not smooth green:




Some paper is for markers.

I need my isometric paper:




And I have made good use of a lot of the small sketchbooks:


One is for my themed doodle pages that I iterate on for my planner pages, repeating patterns, and a whole bunch of other projects:



One is for... just pretend I jokingly C&P'ed the same description for each of these:







The Canson Mixed Media is thick enough to take watercolor, but is thin enough for the button maker. That is the paper for all the pride/pronoun buttons.

One is purely a swatch directory: copic color combos, testing mixing supplies, etc

3 sketchbooks are 'my current sketchbook'. One Strathmore Sketch, one Rendr and one Illo.

I will use up all the Rendr sketchbooks. Almost all the Strathmore is going to go away. Most of the pile in the upper left is going soon one way or another. Filled sketchbooks can go except for a few pages I want to keep.

Part of the problem is how spread out projects, ideas and thumbnails are. I need to have one main sketchbook, use it up, dump most of it and move onto the next. I have a separate Ooly sketchbook I forgot to put in the shot that was supposed to be sort of a project tracker / main sketchbook.

I do have a small pile of pages from sketchbooks I already scrapped a while back. I need to figure out a good storage solution for them. A random pile of pages isn't great. I may drop them in an Ikea box for now.

To Past-Me's credit, my pile of papers has eleven pieces of backing cardboard from the backs of scrapped sketchbooks. I always keep that bit of cardboard because I tape in-progress drawings to them. And watercolors need to be taped down to something, and I use those for that as well. That means I scrapped eleven sketchbooks when I pared down a few years ago. Now if I can just pare down by another 11...



I wasn't originally going to post about paper, but this is my biggest problem. Part of the problem is that I realized a few years ago that using poor quality paper is why a lot of the shading the blending that I practice for hours on end didn't work, and why none of my inking worked. But yet, I cannot get myself to let go of the Strathmore Sketch paper without using it up. So, I must use it up to flush out that part of my collection. At least 7 of those books are going to Scrap. More should go but letting go of paper feels wrong.

Comments

[mistressofmuses]

I'm very impressed by how much of a difference the paper makes on those watercolor tests! That is a striking difference.

I understand the inability to get rid of paper! But using it up and paring the supply down is a very good thing to do. Excellent practice!

And I do like your doodles.

[olivermoss]

Thanks!

I glad it showed somewhat. Yeah, it's a big difference and streamlining all that makes sense, I think.

Getting rid of paper just feels wrong and wasteful. But, I also need to consolidate all of this down. I've taken some good steps towards it tho.

[mistressofmuses]

I think it definitely shows!

It sounds like you have consolidated a lot! And even better to have a plan on using up quite a bit more.

[eller]

First thought: Oh, that's not sooo much paper...
Second thought: Maybe I have a bit of a paper problem? XD

Excellent use of those sketchbooks!