I read this tutorial the other day, and it got me thinking about printing my work onto alternative papers. So, over the weekend, I visited my local art shop in search of handmade papers to experiment with.
For the first try, I used a fairly plain, light coloured paper, and a bright, vivid photograph with plenty of colour and just enough detail to be interesting, but not overly fussy. It came out pretty well, in my opinion. Not wanting to frame it, to preserve the look of the paper texture, I added a hand sewn black border around the image.
The second print was done on a deep red (although again, relatively plain) paper, with gold flecks throughout. I went with a contrasty black and white image this time, since I doubt colour would work very well on such a vividly coloured paper. You can see in the corner that I’d added a little white stitching too, pretty much purely for the sake of experimentation. I don’t like the idea of stitching too far into my actual images. I have seen it done, and with beautiful effect, but for my own work, I prefer the idea of bordering and enhancing, rather than messing with the main focus of the photograph.
I like the effct of them both, although the first is my favourite. I’m not quite 100% about the red paper, although no doubt I’ll experiment a little more with the remainder of the sheet, and perhaps some more contrasty, or simpler, images.
A Negative Influence 