Cardboard Materials
Stuart LoughridgePaint on cardboard?! Usually you would paint on prepared canvas, but cardboard can be a lot of fun to paint on. Stuart Loughridge talks all about what he likes about painting on cardboard and what to look for when choosing your next surface. One of the best things about it is that it is easy to find both in your own home or from local businesses.
Cardboard comes in different corrugations – single and double – so be aware of what you’re picking up because single corrugation has two rippled sides while double corrugation usually has one smooth side. Stuart prefers to paint on double corrugated cardboard because of that smoothness. You can get expensive acid free cardboard as well, but the expense tends to take the fun away and therefore the reason for painting on cardboard at all. It also has some ripples on the surface which may be difficult to paint on. Another option that may be an affordable and available surface for you to paint on is an eight ply mat board. It’s also acid free, but it comes in many different colors which may be interesting for you.
The idea of painting on cardboard is to keep costs low, work on the paintings quickly, be able to give them as gifts, and not be too attached to them. That’s what makes it so fun to work on.
Hello. My name is Stuart Lockridge Cardboard. As a substrate. A substrate is uh a material you paint upon. So often canvas prepared with a uh Jess in a ground.
Uh A board prepared properly with a ground so that paint can bind to it and not be absorbed into the wood. Cardboard is ubiquitous and it's a lot of fun to paint on. Uh You probably see cardboard sticking out of the recycle bins around the neighborhoods uh In big dumpsters that are recycled only, there's some great pieces of cardboard. Uh you get a, a shipment and that, that, that side of the box can make a great little piece for a painting a little size, just a small format or you can get a big piece. I often drop by frame shops and they receive boxes of glass and these pieces of cardboard after they're done using the glass, these large pieces of cardboard can be taken back to the studio and I can do sometimes, you know, maybe 36 by 40 inch cartoons as I call them on this cardboard.
So there's a few things to keep in mind when you're digging and rummaging around and cutting up boxes and looking for cardboard to paint on. There is a kind of run of the mill cheap cardboard, single corrugated and it has quite the ripples from that corrugation. It's a very thin layer of cardboard on top and you can see those ripples. I prefer to find a cardboard that's more smooth and double corrugated, but you can jump in to whatever you want and not be too attached to the product. Here's a double corrugated sheet of cardboard with a smooth surface.
And again, this came from a packing box. I just cut up and there's the double corrugation and that smooth surface. The other side of this piece of cardboard does have the textures from the corrugation. So I will choose to paint on that smooth surface. This is a nice piece of cardboard.
If I can, if I can acquire these at about a 30 by 40 inch size, I cherish them, put them upstairs and I use them like crazy for any ideas. Here's a painting I did on a double corrugated piece of cardboard. You could see the double corrugation there and the back side has those ripples, but the front side is fairly smooth. That's the side I painted on has a few dings. I've dropped it a few times since I painted this again.
The idea is not to be too attached to these, but to crank them out, make them fast and cut them down, fit them into frames that you want to get rid of and you know, give him his gifts. Even here is a expensive piece of cardboard. Just to say you can go, you can really step it up. This is archival acid free cardboard. It's expensive comes in light gray as far as I know, it only comes in light gray.
And this is more for archivists who work in art preservation. Maybe museums. You can if you, if you really get into painting on cardboard and you don't want to paint on the acidic surface of cardboard because cardboard is acidic. It has formaldehyde in it. Generally chemicals in it, then it's not meant to be last.
It's, it's not meant to last long. It is non archival. Well, this is an archival piece of cardboard. Again, it's expensive. It's double corrugated, but it does have ripples on it as well.
The non archival cardboard has smoother surfaces to paint on then. But it's, it's a very slight ripple on this archival cardboard. I've acquired a few sheets of this and again, I get attached to it. So I always hesitate. It's like, oh, I, I shouldn't paint this painting on this nice archival cardboard and that's what we're trying to avoid.
We just wanna keep the creative juices flowing, keep the, the urge to create unblocked and jump into anything you have. And that's why cardboard is a great medium. Another easy to acquire an affordable substrate is uh this is eight ply mat board and most frame shops, nearly all frame shops will carry eight ply mat board. They have scraps sitting around. There's two ply, four ply and eight ply.
You can see that the eight ply is quite thick. It's rigid. They can take some of the water and the go wash medium that we'll be using. Um, it comes in many colors and it is archival so you can get it to be a brown or a cream and jump into painting on a tone surface. That is one of the, one of the benefits of working on cardboard is that it is a brown surface.
It has a nice tone to work on. I call it cardboard brown and your whites pop off of it quite nice. And so it's just a brief run on the substrate of cardboard and keep your eye out for the good stuff.
I wish I would have watched this video first. I'll keep a lookout for some cardboard,so I can try your method. Since I'm just starting out as an artist , I like keeping all my artwork, so I can see my progress as time goes on. I need to remind myself to be open to new ideas and work with them, so I can I move forward with lots of experiences and truly learn from.