Paste Painting - How to do it

The last post showed you some paste papers. Maybe it whet your appetite and would like to know how to do it? It's simple.

1. Set up your workstation with the following: paper (any paper that will withstand some abuse will work), tools (repurpose household items and toys), 2" brushes, paste paint (see previous post for what I like to use). This picture shows my table in the garage on this beautiful fall day.

2. Brush the paste onto the paper, not too thick so that it doesn't hold your marks and not too thin so that it dries quickly. To begin use only one to three colors or you may find that you wind up with mud. Use your tools, working from the elbow not the wrist, to make marks in the paste. The idea is to loosen up your artwork not to overthink it. Part of the fun is seeing what the various tools will do. If you don't like the result, just paint over it. This picture shows green and yellow paste mixed together with a brush.

This picture shows the same sheet with marks made. The squiggles were made with oil pastels in the wet paste.

3. Let it dry. As long as I've set up my work station, I will probably be making paste papers for several days. I made about 20 sheets today. I will cut each sheet down into 8 note cards and sell the packet. I never have enough of these to sell so it makes good sense for me to make a bunch of sheets at once.

Have fun.

Lorrie