Old ladies and toilet roll
Texture, drawing and Super 8 film
Have you ever drawn with toilet roll?
You know Good Ship Illustration - and their instagram lives where you do fun drawing for an hour while listening to chat about crisps? (if not, link at the end).
Well, they did a session about drawing with toilet roll and it blew my mind!
I’m no stranger to using a bit of kitchen roll while working - dabbing up some rough watercolour, adding a bit of texture, using a little twist of paper to direct an ink splotch.
But a whole drawing? There is so much texture you can get from toilet roll!
The drawings that came out were giving me an odd feeling. Toilet roll falls apart when you use it as a paint brush, and all the little fibres get caught in the ink and spread on the page.
It’s a bit like the feeling I get from old films, where there’s dust and scratches.
Recently, I got some Super 8 footage digitised. It was of my parents wedding, a snowy day in the late 1960’s. Some guests were old ladies wrapped up in giant coats and spectacular hats which they kept on throughout the buffet.
Perfect subject matter for toilet roll drawing!
I still need to do a cost analysis to figure out whether it’s cheaper to use toilet roll or kitchen roll - one has a more expensive initial outlay but is more robust so lasts longer. Not being able to reuse paper as much as a normal brush bothers me.
But I can keep painting with toilet roll for a long while before it disintegrates - it just gets more textured and interesting as time passes.
Like old ladies do.
What interesting and unusual things have you used for drawing and painting? What gives you the best textures? I’d be so excited to know your favourites!
Links:
Good Ship Illustration - toilet roll painting session on Insta
I love this. I have used the frayed ends of torn up paper towel, which I always have close to my art table because sometimes I want to soak up some ink when there's too big of a puddle. But I've also purposefully cut up the bristles on a Chinese bamboo brush to paint with, to attain that same lack of control that gives unexpected results.
Oh these drawings are great, I love them! I'd forgotten about that Art Club - will definitely try this again...