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I have been buying my painting paper from the same small place in Bhagalpur since I was a young man. My mother also used to get from them only. This paper is hand-made, khadi, you can feel the fibers with your fingers, the way it takes the natural color is different from anything machine made. For Mithila work this matters very much because the line work is everything, the paper must hold a fine line without bleeding, but also it must have some tooth, some roughness for the color to sit on. Last month I ordered my usual stack. And it came, and I thought maybe I received a bad batch. But I used it for three pieces now and it is not the same. The surface is smoother. Too smooth. The water-based colors are sliding instead of settling. The line is fine but the paper does not grip the pigment like before. I called the shop and the man told me their master craftsman retired and the new man is trying to "improve" the process. He said this like it is good news. I am sitting here with a half-finished fish motif on this new paper and the tail is not right. The color is not sitting where I put it. It is not the paper's fault maybe, it is my hand not trusting the surface. But how many years to learn a new paper when you already know one for twenty years. I do not want to start again. I want the old paper back. Has anyone else faced this with a material that changed without warning? Not a brand reformulation but the actual hands that made it, the knowledge that left. How do you decide whether to adapt or to find a new source altogether.

There's a certain German 1980s printmaking paper I turn down every time it shows up at the studio. It's beautiful paper, great weight, takes ink like a dream. But it smells. Not bad exactly, just that particular chemical smell from the sizing they used back then, and once you notice it you can't un-notice it. I've had pieces on that paper come back from collectors years later and the smell is still hanging on in the frame. So I've become the person who sniffs paper before buying it. I can tell you which decades used which binders by now. People think I'm being precious. Maybe I am. But there's something honest about paper that smells like nothing at all, and I'd rather keep the empty space truly empty.

I spent nearly two weeks not painting. Not because I was busy, which I was, but because I kept telling myself I'd only start once I went to the art store and got proper cold-pressed paper. The good stuff. Something deserving of the sketch I had in my head. Finally today I was in front of the stationery shelf in a random supermarket near my mother's place, of all places, and they had these thin spiral-bound sketchbooks. Rough cartridge, ghost of a grain. The kind schoolkids use for drawing class. Ninety rupees or something. Bought it out of spite, basically. And I sat on my balcony this evening and painted the water tank on the neighbour's roof, just the tank and the wires and the late light hitting the wall behind it. Nothing ambitious. It took me forty minutes and the paper buckled a little where I overworked the wash, and the whole thing has that cheap-paper fuzz that I used to hate when I was in architecture school. I'm honestly a bit in love with it. That fuzz has a texture you can't get on the fancy stuff. Funny how the good paper became another excuse to not work. I'm going to give myself permission to ruin a few more of these cheap books before I even think about touching my nice blocks again.

Okay so I've been blaming myself all week for these muddy skies. Like genuinely sitting here going "what is wrong with you Dani, you know how to do a wet on wet by now." Changing my water, my brush angle, my breathing (??) trying to fix it. Then this morning I switched brands of paper because the art store was out of my usual and it was flawless on the first try. The paper. It was the paper the whole time. I almost laughed out loud alone in my studio. I think the humbling part is how quick I am to assume the failure is in me and not in the materials. Which honestly tracks with a lot of other things about me haha. But also. It means I wasted an entire week of good painting time being mad at my own hands. Anyone else ever fought a problem for days and it turned out to be something dumb like the tooth of the paper or the humidity or whatever?

A friend from years back messaged me wanting a print for her new apartment. Small thing, maybe A4 size. I said €80 because that's what I used to charge for that size before I stopped selling through galleries. Felt fair between friends. Then I went to buy the paper. Hahnemühle Platinum Rag, because anything cheaper buckles in the saltwater bath and I've learned that lesson the hard way. €22 just for the sheet. The frame I found was simple pine, nothing fancy, €18. Then the glass. Then I had to redo the exposure twice because the light was wrong last week, that's three sheets of paper now, and the third one I messed up the rinse and it came out streaky. I don't know what I think the paper and chemicals and framing should cost. But €80 for a thing that took three afternoons to get right and eats materials the way it does... I think I'm scared to charge what it actually costs because the number sounds too big for something blue on paper. And that's a me problem, not a market problem.

I teach a beginner botanical watercolour class at the local art centre twice a year, and I start every session the same way: I hand everyone a sheet of cheap cellulose paper and tell them to paint a leaf on it. The groaning is predictable. But I want them to feel what bad paper does before they ever touch the good stuff. I want them to experience the buckling, the pilling, the muddy washes that happen when the sizing fails. Because until you've fought a losing battle against a sheet of Canson student-grade, you don't really understand why you're paying for Arches. It's the same reason I still keep a block of that wretched paper in my own studio. Every few months I pull it out and paint a study on it, just to remind myself. It keeps me honest about technique. You can't fudge your way through a wash on paper that won't hold it. You have to be deliberate.

Every cyanotype I make gets developed in sun and seawater, and that is usually beautiful. This week I did a set in the dark, under my own hands, timing the exposure second by second instead of letting the sky decide. I had been avoiding it because I thought losing the sun would flatten everything. It did the opposite. Four prints of a scallop net, all of them finally the blue I keep seeing in my head and never quite got on paper, that deep cold blue the sea goes in January when nobody is in it. I have been printing for years and I still cannot explain why the same formula, the same paper, gives me a different blue depending on the day. But now I know I can hold the door shut myself when I need to. The sun is back tomorrow. I will go back to the beach with the paper and let it do what it wants. It just feels good to know I am not only waiting for weather anymore.

ok so I'm at the art supply store today picking out watercolor paper, like actually taking my time because this stuff is expensive and I have a specific feel I'm going for for this piece I'm doing, and this older guy who works there comes up and goes "that stuff's overrated, you should try this" and hands me this cheap cold press that buckles if you breathe on it wrong. I said "oh thanks, I'm looking for the hot press actually" and he goes "no no, cold press is better for beginners, you'll get better results." like sir. I have a BFA. I have been painting with watercolor for eight years. I paint literally every single day. I did not ask for your opinion on my paper. and I just stood there holding my paper and being like "okay thanks" because I'm 26 and I still default to being polite and then I walked away and fumed about it the whole drive home. why do men do this. why is it always at the art store. I have never once had a woman employee at an art store assume I don't know what I'm doing. not once. anyway I bought the hot press and it's beautiful and I'm going to paint something really good on it out of spite. that's the plan.

ok so this happened last month and I'm still not over it. I had a walkthrough at a small space, it was going fine, and then the director asked me what my work is about and I gave her a whole rambling thing about my cold press paper and how the sizing takes the wash differently and she just kind of nodded and moved on. I got to my car and wanted to scream because that's not what I meant at all, I meant the window and the light and my dad, and instead I gave her a paper review. so tell me your version, what's the sentence you actually pull out when a gallery asks what your work is about? or the one you wish you'd said? I'm collecting them because I refuse to be a person who talks about paper ever again. mine, the one I should have said: I paint one window over and over because I'm trying to hold onto a room that isn't mine anymore. there. see how easy that was, three weeks too late 😭

Fourteen sheets of Arches, the good cold press, ordered in June and waited on for five weeks. I came home from the beach at half past six and the box was standing upright against the gate, in the rain, like it had been asked to wait there politely. The cardboard was so soft it opened with two fingers. The paper inside is not ruined exactly. That is the maddening part. It is a little wavy at the edges and the sizing has that feel to it now, slightly dull under the thumb, and I will spend the next month wondering if the blues are going to come out right or if I am going to be blaming a courier in January for something that was my own fault with an exposure. I did not shout at anyone. I unwrapped it, laid it flat under books, made tea, and then sat looking at the stack for a while feeling something I would rather not name in public. My partner said well, at least it is only paper. He is a good man and he meant it kindly and I have not spoken to him since. Anyway. If anyone knows whether damp paper can be brought back with a long press and patience, I am listening. If not, I am going to keep pressing it and pretending.

Twelve volumes, 40 kronor at a secondhand place in Majorna. The paper is perfect, slightly foxed, good weight, exactly what I use. That was the whole point of buying it. It's been on the studio floor for nine days. I've opened maybe four pages. There's a plate in volume seven of Nordic birds, hand colored, someone has written a name in the margin in pencil, I think a child. I keep not cutting it. The thing is I know how this ends. Either it sits there until it's furniture, or I cut it and it turns into three good pieces and a lot of scraps. Both are fine. I just don't like that I've made it into a decision. Usually the paper is just paper. Might start with volume one, the A's. Nobody's sentimental about the A's.

Not staring at it in the good way. The way where I take it out, lay it on the table, put it back in the folder. It's a probate ledger, hand ruled, dated 1794. Watermarked. The paper is gorgeous and completely unusable, because it came to us as a bound item and someone on staff decided it was too far gone to repair, so it's been deaccessioned and I was allowed to take the blank leaves. Here's the problem. Every blank leaf has a bit of someone's actual life bleeding into the gutter. A column of numbers. A name, half a name. Something pressed in 1796 that's now a brown stain shaped like a leaf. My whole practice is torn edges and silence. I cut the pieces. That's the point. But I sat there with the scalpel on Tuesday and just could not put the blade through a man's handwriting from 1794 to make a nice grey rectangle for a gallery wall. So now it's Thursday and there's a stack of 18th century paper on my table doing nothing, and I'm starting to suspect the paper is winning. Not looking for advice. Just wanted to say it out loud somewhere that isn't my own head.

There is a box under my work table. A 1930s Swedish school atlas, a ledger from a shipping office, a stack of letters someone kept for forty years, all of it too good to cut. Some pieces are so brittle that lifting them is a decision. I bought the atlas eleven years ago. I have used two pages from it. The thing is, you cannot collage with paper you are afraid of. Torn edges need a hand that does not hesitate, and a hand that hesitates makes a soft, apologetic tear you can see from across the room. So the box sits there and I work around it with the ordinary paper, the newspapers and receipts and the offcuts I do not care about. These are often better anyway. That is the uncomfortable part. Last week I finally cut into the atlas. Two pages of Jämtland. It was fine. The borders held, the tear went clean, and the piece is better for it. But I did not feel the relief I expected. Mostly I felt that I had spent eleven years keeping a box of paper instead of a box of work. Not sure what to do with that. The box stays, obviously.

My studio is basically a stack of things I've kept because the paper was good. A 1937 Swedish school atlas, a box of receipt stubs from a locksmith in Mölndal who closed in the eighties, a lot of endpapers from books too far gone to save at the conservation studio. Today I was working on a small piece, maybe 20 by 25 cm, mostly empty. I had a scrap of what I thought was a nice aged ledger paper pinned to the wall for two weeks, waiting for the right spot. Turned it over. It's the back of an envelope. Someone's address in pencil, half rubbed out. The good side is the envelope interior, which has a waxy coating, and it will not take paste. It just sits there on top of the glue like it's refusing. Two weeks of looking at it. I should have checked in the first minute. I keep things because the paper is good and then I don't look at the back, because looking at the back is admitting I might have been fooled by the front. I've kept it anyway. It's on the wall, wrong side out now. I don't have a plan for it.

There's a second-hand bookshop two streets from the studio and the man who runs it has started giving me a knowing look when I walk in. He doesn't ask anymore. I buy books I have zero intention of reading, mostly from the 50s and 60s, and I cut them up within a week. The really sad part is I'm a paper conservator. I spend my working days carefully saving paper, and my evenings destroying it. I've started telling myself it's a kind of balance. Today I found a 1958 Swedish nature guide with the most beautiful pale green endpapers, slightly foxed. It's already on my table. The text is going in the recycling, the paper I'll keep. I paid 20 kronor for it and I feel only slightly guilty.

I ran out of my usual Mi-Teintes mid-week and didn't feel like going into town, so I grabbed the cheapest pastel paper the shop had, the generic school kind, the one I used to look down on a little. Some hard gritty thing that grabs every layer and won't let go. And you know what, it's kind of wonderful. The tooth is so aggressive you can't over-blend, it stops me from smearing everything into that same soft mush I always fall into when I'm nervous. It forces me to commit to each mark because you can't really fix it once it's down. Ten euros for a whole ream instead of the price of one decent pad. I did a small portrait of my partner on it last night and the roughness actually suits him, his face is all angles and stubble, and I keep staring at it wondering why I never tried this before. Might be a phase, might be that I finally learned that the expensive stuff was just making me lazy. Anyway, I think I'll keep the ugly paper around. Does anyone else keep a cheap paper they reach for when the good stuff makes you feel too precious to touch? Or am I alone in this weirdness. 🙂

Started it two years ago. Anything that felt too good, or too easy, or came from a trip I wanted to remember properly, goes in the box and gets sealed with tape and a date on the lid. The rule is I can't open it until the date. Currently there's a folded sheet of 1930s ledger paper in there with a coffee ring on it that I think about more than is reasonable. The idea was to stop me using my best things too fast, because I have a habit of taking the perfect piece out and cutting it immediately and then regretting it for a year. That part works. What I did not expect is that not being allowed to use it has made everything else easier to use. Regular paper stopped feeling like a compromise. Two more years on the current box. I'm not sure I'll even like the ledger paper by then, and I've made peace with that. Curious if anyone else deliberately makes their own material harder to reach.

The back of a sheet of Canson Mi-Teintes is the honeycomb side, and for two years I would not touch it. It felt like the wrong side of the paper, the side for students. Then I ran out of the good side and started a face on the back out of pure frustration, and honestly the tooth grabs the pastel in a way I like more. Softer edges, the smudge stays where I put it instead of drifting. Now I buy the paper and immediately flip it. My partner asked why I pay for two usable sides and only ever use one, which is a fair question and I did not have an answer. There is a half-finished portrait of my neighbour on the honeycomb side right now, and I have already redone her mouth three times, which is normal for me, but on this paper the mistakes come off cleaner so it feels less like a disaster each time. I know some of you will say the honeycomb side eats your pastels faster. It does. I accept this. If anyone has figured out how to keep it from going muddy when you build up too many layers, I would like to hear it, because layer six is where mine always turns to dust and sadness.

A colleague at the conservation studio cleared out a cupboard last week and let me take a box of old Swedish ledger paper, maybe a hundred sheets, 1930s, the good rag stuff with that faint blue rule running through it. I carried it home on the tram and felt quite pleased with myself. Two sheets survived the first pass. Two, out of a hundred. The rest went back in the box. The blue lines fight everything I put near them, and the paper is too even, too polite, it wants to be a background and never a thing in itself. I keep falling for paper I will never use. The box is still under the table. What I kept was an endpaper with a brown water stain shaped roughly like Denmark, and a sheet where someone had pressed a flower in 1961 and left a ghost of it. Those two are already good as they are. Anything I add will have to earn it. I have done this for years and I still cannot tell in advance which sheets will hold anything. It is only ever after I have torn into them.

Okay so I've been trying to get this one soft grey-blue sky wash right for like three mornings now. Kept wetting the paper, laying it down, lifting a little, and every single time it dries with this hard edge right in the middle where I didn't mean one to be. I finally looked at the block and realized the paper I grabbed is the cheap cotton I bought in a panic when I first went full time, not the stuff I usually use. And now I'm sitting here wondering how much of this week's frustration was actually me being rusty versus me fighting paper that just doesn't want to behave. Which I think is kind of the trap, right? You get used to blaming yourself when a piece fights back and sometimes the material really is the problem. But I also can't tell if I'm making an excuse for myself because the wash is genuinely not good. Anyone else ever hit a wall and then realized it was the paper/brush/pigment all along, and did it make you feel better or worse?