Secrets of success for painting on Mixed Media Mineral Papers

Get ready for an introduction to a different kind of paper, if you have not already tried painting on Mineral Papers.

Visiting the local art store in Colorado Springs recently, I wanted to pick up some new surfaces to paint on. I prefer to relax into non-representative landscape painting with my coffee each morning. Having run out of paper I was thinking of getting some more 180# or greater mixed-media acid free paper in a 11” X 14” size. I didn’t make it to the traditional papers, but got stopped when I saw the Yupo polypropylene paper tablets I had recently experimented with. Next to it was Yasutomo Multi Media Mineral Paper.

The description on the cover of the 20-sheet pad said it was 6” X 8” (15.2 X 20.3 cm) 100-lb and made from calcium carbonate providing a unique texture for water based or dry media. This paper is Waterproof, Tear Resistant, and Foldable. I would add it is a translucent bright white vellum surface that is acid free.

Wow, what fun to paint on! This Mineral Paper is perfect for me. If anything I’d like some really large sheets to make wrap-around art I could backlight as a lamp! But, since I have been painting a lot on Artfinity Synthesis synthetic paper and Yupo synthetic paper, it just was not that different.

I hope I can provide you with a new technique that I have not witnessed on Youtube or anywhere by anyone else. My secret for success with all these synthetic papers is to provide a means to keep the pigment on the paper without it running or bleeding at random. Some of the randomness of it’s non-wetting properties are great, but I want a little more control over my art.

My secret is to use heavy body acrylic paint, typically a thick Golden brand professional titanium white from a tube. It is thicker than cheaper and other titanium white acrylics, not that they won’t work, but I like a guaranteed product. I place two long rows of the titanium white hb acrylic in my butcher pan. I use a lot of it. Then I dropper in smaller amounts of the acrylic inks I am going to use for the sky and foreground. Say, use three-four drops away from each other and the white. I blend the white hb acrylic with the acrylic inks in seperate areas away from each other to keep my blues away from my ground colors.

These pigments will not brush right on the Mineral Paper and will stick just like painting on regular mixed-media paper. If you plan to backlight. Be aware of every stroke as they show up looking through the vellum. If not, paint on and enjoy the process.

I use a big brush 1.5-2” wide watercolor style for laying in the sky and center ground-levels, but want to add some new value change at the foreground that draws you in to the front of the painting. As you can see from my art, good values are my most important goal in completing a painting, but also always on my mind whether it’s skies or fields I am painting. So, I take acrylic ink bottles with dark browns, black, indigo, or squeeze pure Payne’s Gray out right on the surface undiluted in a horizontal line typically. I get the maximum water loaded in the big brush and drag it across the paper letting it bleed and run. This can be very intriguing and you may want to let it be? But, there’s more. I spray this bottom section I just put down with 91% isopropyl alcohol and wow, it really bubbles up and runs around. At this point I like to add my input via a spatula, a 8b pencil, or the bottom of the large brush handle to direct the foreground into something I recognize. I might even grab a soft pastel and use it on the surface. I might grab some charcoal and do the same. This is the completion phase.

I hope you can give this a try and let me know how it went. Have fun!!