Surfaces and Silly Shackles
I'm at the point in my (visual) art journey where I could say paper really makes a difference. And I'm not saying this in the sense of expensive paper = good, but the kind of surface you're working on affects the final result just as much, if not more, as the medium. Different paper works for different mediums and working styles, so knowing what you can get out of it is important. Newsprints work great in collages, sandpapers make great textures, and watercolor papers... make it so much easier doing traditional watercolor techniques.
When I was younger paper was just paper and I had the false belief that an artist could make everything out of anything, and being picky was simply an excuse. But you don't build a house with lego bricks, they're great for different purposes, and you don't use a hammer to saw. Anyway, this is a long-winded prelude to say I just tried my 13-year-old watercolor pencil set on this wonderful watercolor pad I'm working on and it blew my mind that the colors dispersed so well I couldn't even see the initial pencil marks. The set came from my school days so don't even mention the word "lightfast". It was the same set I liked since grade school. I used to use them dipped in water because I couldn't figure out another way to activate the colors without turning the paper into mush.
I have tried a lot of things so far, and I conclude that I've always been fortunate to have pretty good stationeries as a child. They were all midgrade brands, never beyond student grade, but the good kind of student grade. It was the paper. I didn't get to use much beyond copy paper and occasionally the thicker version of it in a drawing book. Otherwise, cardstocks and cartons for DIY crafts, which didn't seem to be any sturdier to paint on. Yes, I had no clue watercolor paper behaved so differently back then. Or that paper with the same thickness can have such different traits.
There's nothing wrong in the selection I could find in the stores I grew up with. It was just a small town thing and if you wanted to paint you would go buy yourself fabric rolls or a canvas I guess, not a sketchbook. We did some drawing in class, crayons and oil pastels before graduating to colored pencils... I was simply enamored with a style the stores weren't equipped to support. It feels laughable now, you can buy whatever from wherever easier than ever. The biggest store in town did stock some "classier" paper types, but I never got to know the feel because they were priced out of my range. Why would you pay so much when you could have drawing paper for free from math exams?
So you don't do watercolor on copy paper. That already sounds like a silly childish thing, but along the way I do learn I have internalized some other stupid notions too. I've always been drawn to metallic/shimmer/foiling effects as I think they enhance the tactility of physical media. They look different depending on how you look at the artwork. I spammed a lot of glitter and iridescent paint on my paintings. I simply like them. And I have relegated the use of these stuff (and by extension, myself) as childish. Nevermind that at the same time I recognize the fact that these techniques have been employed since monks did illuminated manuscripts in monasteries (and before). Eastern Asian painters use gold paints to finish their works so much it's still included in many sets. In my head "real artists" create "sense of depth" and "illusion of light" via their mastery of the medium, not resorting to some party tricks.
I "shade" by using fountain pen inks. I fix white space with gel pen and gouache. I make it up in my mind that "real artist" painstakingly preserves their whites by extremely skilled brush control. Maybe some of them do, but I've since learnt that even my favorite illustrators reach for the same gel pen I use time and again. As someone who learn mixed media mostly on my own plus an endless appetite for tinkering, I thrive on weird hacks and tend to label my problem solving methods "improper". I found out that I could dilute a certain black drawing pen with a certain red water-based marker to produce sheening green tint and felt like I cheated from the challenge of using only two colors. Of course, I'm not the only tinkerer ever walked the earth, so lo and behold whatever nonsense I came up with would already be out there, with a name, being used by artists everywhere.
It is partially fueled by feelings of insecurity and inadequacy, no doubt. I'm prone to discount my own skills, knowledge, and taste. The other part... Honestly I'm mildly amused and disturbed to learn just how many nonsense I carried with me to this day, insidiously lurking under the surface. I never put a lot of thought into any of these until I got them checked and found myself entertainingly wrong. While this is relatively benign, I wonder what other nonsense I subconsciously subscribe to.
You'd think I would be able to learn many of these before, having been making things since forever and surrounded by people doing their craft. We used to hang out while doing our own thing too. The gulf between "knowing" and "understanding" can be so vast, and they only came to light when I finally experienced things firsthand (plus watching Youtube tutorials on slow-mo).
So yeah, thanks for the artists putting their processes out there. This was never meant to be a profound post (most of my posts are just me messing around with myself thinking out loud), so hopefully some of you get a kick out of the silly arbitrary "rules" my brain latched on. Get to know your tools, always question what you think you know, and have a happy creative life.