My New Hobby: Newsprint Painting

Anything to take a break from the regularly scheduled insanity

I confess that sometimes I need to step away from my computer and decompress. With the hostility of the upcoming election and the constant lying of the Trump administration, you can be forgiven if you’re on the lookout for semi-productive ways to detach from reality.

I recently wrote an article about a contest I won that included a year’s subscription to the local paper. As it turns out, winning that contest continues to bring me joy almost a year later. You can read the story of the contest here:

To make a long story short, I currently have a bunch of awesome newspapers laying around the house just screaming at me to do something with them!

Dabbling in art

I’ve always enjoyed art. I take writing seriously, but in pursuing a career as a writer you also pick up rudimentary skills in things like web design, graphic design, drawing, photography, image manipulation, etc.

The main problem with art is that art supplies are expensive. However, I’ve always liked the way it looked when people painted on newsprint. Painting on newsprint adds a certain chaos to the image and the juxtaposition of your brush strokes with the printed words and random images sends the eye spiraling in all kinds of different directions.

At the same time as newsprint makes it seem like more is going on, it also helps to cover up mistakes! For an amateur artist like myself, that’s perfect!

If you ever go into an art store, you’ll notice that sketchbooks are super expensive. Therefore painting on newsprint represents a considerable savings.

Preparation

Once I get done reading the paper, I cut it along the fold in the middle, and then I cut along the edges. The resulting sheets are a little bigger than a standard sheet of office paper.

Not too long ago, I got a tracing board for my kids. I got it for them because they’ve taken an interest in flip books and it was only about $20. The tracing board is a large drawing board that plugs into a typical micro USB slot. The whole back lights up allowing you to trace an image.

It’s a pleasant surface to draw on and it is super easy to trace an image onto newsprint.

Searching for an image

I haven’t moved on to original drawings yet, but I’ll get there. This is an ongoing process. For now I’m having fun doing google searches for old fashioned pen and ink images. There’s some cool stuff out there on the internet if you know where to look.

I download an image, run it through Photoshop to darken the lines and make it easier to trace, and then I print it out. I then orient it on the tracing board and get my image.

I started doing my tracing in pencil, but I’ve found that between the newsprint and the printer paper there’s plenty of thickness to work with ink pens. If you ink during the tracing stage, you get done a lot faster.

Inking

Once you’ve got the outline done you can do the shading. You’d probably be better off doing the coloring first because the ink can taint your colors whether you use a marker or a brush.

I have a set of artist’s ink pens that are awesome. You need something with around a .7 and 1.0mm tip. I have some with a ball tip that I got from the dollar store that work great. Felt tip ones work well too, but sometimes they dry out. You can also find some cool brush tip pens that allow you to shade in huge areas.

Coloring

For coloration I’ve been using a set of dual tipped markers. Each marker has a fine tip at one end and a wide tip at the other for a larger stroke. It’s a 60 color set so you can do plenty of shading.

I’ve been adding in the colors and then going back to touch up with the ink pens. You can swap back and forth, but be mindful about where the ink is wet.

I’ll move on to paint or acrylic at some point. It would be fun to punch up the images with some brighter whites and you just can’t do that with marker pens. Actually, I could probably apply the white first with the paint and then do the rest of the color with the markers. There’s no law about mixing the products that you use.

Lightroom and Photoshop

When I get done, I scan the image and then enhance it with either Lightroom or Photoshop. I like to add a vignette, and I could see how I’ll probably play around with lens flares or other .png effects at some point. I like to add explosions into my pictures.

Here’s a Mad Hatter painting I did. I added in the teacups and the teapot just for something to do.

Newsprint paintings always grab attention

I’ll most likely find a way to incorporate more newsprint paintings into my articles in the future. I enjoy harvesting images from Unsplash, but sometimes they just don’t have the image that I’m looking for. A hand painted newsprint painting, even when it’s digitally enhanced, grabs more attention.

I don’t mind spending the time on this, I can usually get most of a painting done while I’m watching a TV show with my wife. Frankly, anything that gets my eyes off a television screen is welcome in this day and age.

Also, my mind is generally pretty tapped out in the evening, but it’s a good time to brainstorm new ideas. Cranking out a quick painting is a good way to motivate myself to write the article in the morning.

Anyone out there have a great article that is lacking the perfect image? Shoot me an email with your concept and I’ll take a crack at it!

Here’s another distraction if you’re still looking for one: