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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.

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.

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. 🙂

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?

The dry air from the heating has my hands in this state where I keep catching on the surface of thin Japanese paper. Tiny little tears where I just want a clean edge. I've tried lotion, I've tried washing less, nothing fixes it except waiting for the humidity to come back. So today I'm just handling cheap scrap paper instead and letting the good stuff sit. A whole day of making do because of dry hands. Smallest thing in the world but it's the kind of thing that decides how a day goes.

still thinking about the art teacher who told 12 year old me i was "wasting good paper" because i drew on it without sketching first. like i was supposed to map out every line in pencil before i was allowed to touch the good stuff. i sat in the back and drew anyway because i didn't know how to do it her way and i still don't!!! some people never let that voice go. took me fifteen years and a therapist to realize the voice telling me to slow down, erase, redo, was never mine. it was hers. i make fast and messy on purpose now. if it burns i burn it and i start again. that's the whole point. paper is cheap. your nerve isn't.

Working part-time at the paper conservation studio has ruined me for hoarding. People bring in these things, old letters, theatre programs from the 30s, family photos where the emulsion is lifting, and I get to touch them, gently, and then they go back to the owner. Nothing stays. Meanwhile my own collage stack is mostly junk mail and book pages I've torn out of things nobody wanted anyway. Nothing precious. Which is probably why I can actually cut into it. There was one piece today though. A 1942 ration card, some address in Malmö, pencil handwriting on the back. I sat with it longer than I should have. It went back in its sleeve and off to the client. Fine. But that's the thing that'll be in my head while I work tonight, not any of my own paper.

Sold a 50x70 cyanotype last week for €180. It was a good week, I should have been glad. Instead I sat at the kitchen table that night counting again: the paper is €14 a sheet now, up from €9 two years ago, the ferric ammonium citrate another €40 for a bottle that makes maybe thirty prints, and I toss two out of five because the light was wrong or the sea water left a tide mark I didn't want. So per finished print, before my own hours, I am at maybe €25 in materials and half my days are duds. €155 for a day of standing at the water, holding paper down, waiting. That is what it comes to when I let myself look. I have not raised a price since 2019 and I am afraid if I do people will just stop. But the arithmetic is getting louder than the shame of asking for more. I think next order I will go to €240 and see who blinks. That number has been in my head for months now, and saying it out loud here feels like the first time it is real.

i ordered pastelmat like i always do and somehow ended up with a pad of canson mi-teintes that's way too smooth. the pastel just sits on top, doesn't bite, three layers and it's already muddy. i was so annoyed i almost threw it in the bin. but i have been working on the same reference for four days now on paper i hate and something weird is happening. because it's not taking the pastel well i have to be more careful, work lighter, actually plan each stroke instead of just smudging everything into a blur. the face i'm doing has more structure than anything i've made in months. it looks like a drawing instead of a dream i had. i think sometimes the wrong materials teach you something the right ones can't. or maybe i'm just making peace with wasting twenty quid on paper i won't buy again.🙂

I've been using Arches 140lb cold press for nearly twenty years. It was reliable. You knew what you were getting. That block of paper I opened this morning has sizing so uneven the paint is pooling in patches on the first three sheets. I'm not talking about a minor inconsistency. I'm talking about washes that lay down flat in one area and bead up like wax in another. I wrote to them a few months ago about a different batch and got a polite form letter suggesting I might be using too much water. Which, no. I know how much water I'm using. I've been doing this long enough to know the difference between a technique problem and a materials problem. I've already switched to Fabriano Artistico for my commission work. I didn't want to. I liked Arches. But I can't keep fighting the paper. If anyone else has noticed this I'd be curious, though I suspect most people just adapt and don't say anything.

I made a careful little video last week. Me explaining the cyanotype process, coating the paper, the chemistry, why seawater instead of plain water. Good lighting. I even wrote a script. It got maybe 90 views. The day before, I'd thrown a phone clip up without thinking. Just me wading into the surf holding a wet print, letting the wave take it for half a second before I pulled it back. No talking. Grainy. My partner's shadow in the corner. That one has four thousand views and people are asking where to buy the paper. I keep being surprised by this and I should stop being surprised by it. The thing people want from the work is not the knowing, it's the feeling of almost-losing it. I don't know what to do with that except maybe stop making the careful videos.

I buy the Arches oil paper in the big pad, the 350gsm. Been using it about four years, always the same. Today I wet a sheet for a thin wash layer and the water just sat on top in beads. It's like they oversized it. I let it dry, tried again, same thing. Had to scrub the surface with a stiff brush to get any tooth back. Anyone else hit this batch? Or is this just what happens when a brand gets big enough to stop caring. I know I should probably just size my own paper and stop complaining. But I liked the convenience and I'm annoyed about it.

Working on this piece built around a found photograph from the 70s, this woman standing in a doorway, someone's aunt probably. I tore the paper around her and layered it onto a board with charcoal and acrylic. But there's this one hinge point where the photograph meets the torn paper and it just won't sit right. I keep adjusting the collage thinking the composition is off, then yesterday I realized the piece works fine everywhere except exactly where those two papers meet. The problem is the junction itself, not what's around it. Every fix I try makes it worse. I pulled a strip of paper off and now there's a gap, so I'm just staring at this torn edge like it's going to solve itself. Anyone else ever had a piece where one seam is the whole problem? Where you keep blaming the surrounding work and it turns out to be the one physical joint you chose?

I spent yesterday evening peeling a piece of 1950s bookplate off a backing board and it just tore. Not a clean lift, the whole inner corner shredded. My own mistake, wrong adhesive when I mounted it two years ago, and now the paper is gone with it. At conservation we'd call it a lesson in reversibility. At home it's just me being annoyed at myself. There's a strange thing though. That torn corner, that little loss, it's actually the most alive part of the collage now. The rest is too neat. I've been staring at it all morning trying to decide if I'm going to fix it or leave it as the best piece of the whole thing.