Featured Article: PULP PAINTING

Pulp painting is an exciting aspect of papermaking where you can apply coloured pulps to a couched sheet of paper. The sheet of paper acts as a canvas and specially prepared pulps become paint. You can apply the pulp paints by squirting, spooning, or tossing them onto the paper. By using stencils, cookie cutters or paint scrapers you can create crisp images or designs. Pulp paint can be used to enhance and anchor an object you plan to embed into the paper.

The pulp paints prepared by The Paperwright are made from cotton linters that have been processed in a Hollander beater for four hours. By doing so, the fibres are refined so that they can pass through a squirt bottle without clogging it up. After retention agent is added, the pulp is coloured, sized and partially drained. Because some of the water is removed you end up with a concentrated form of pulp. Cotton linter has been used to create the pulp paints so that you can store them without worrying about the mixture going rancid.

Basic Instructions:
• prepare formation aid a day ahead.
• fill squirt bottle 2/3 full of water
• add two to three tablespoons of coloured pulp
• add a tablespoon of prepared formation aid
• shake up the contents
• you are ready to apply pulp as a loose form of paint

Hints:
• add more pulp for a more concentrated look
• use stencil to form shapes
• use small metal racks from the kitchen. Press into paper, apply paints, remove rack.
• can help hold embedded objects in paper
• use edges of plastic rulers to create lines and layers of lined edges on your paper
• lay down string or other object, pulp on and around objects, remove.

Artists: Jenepher Hooper, Marian Robinson and Britt Quinlan

Pulp painting supplies