THERE'S DIFFERENT KINDS OF PAPER?!

THERE'S DIFFERENT KINDS OF PAPER?! Yep. That is right. But don't run off just yet... this step is actually really easy.

Okay so first of all you need different kinds of groundwork for different mediums. Depending on the size of pieces, I love using oil and acrylic paints on a painted wooden board. This just creates a stable ground for the piece, as well as giving off a high quality effect. Make sure your wood is smooth, yet not glossy as it will make a resistant against the paint to dry to and especially with acrylic, can go all pealy and crumbly. You can pick wooden boards up from any local DIY shop - personally I just go B n Q as they cut the wood to the size I need there and then too - which is always a bonus! Make sure you paint over your wooden board a couple of times. I just use white dulux wall paint for the base coat because it is a natural ground so you can have your true colour when placed and mixed.

When choosing paper for oil and acrylic, sketch books are always available and are clearly labeled which product they are meant for. You can always tell by the texture of the paper too as, for example, oil paint paper has rough raised thick texture, due to the thickness of the paint and the watery products used to blend like white spirit and linseed oil. You can purchase your oil/ acrylic paper sketchbooks from HobbyCraft and other local art supplying stores.

This is the tricky-ish part for the Faber Castell Polychromos. I always stick to Daler Rowney paper as I feel like you always receive high quality, no matter what thickness, texture or product you go for. For each individual portrait I always go for A1 Canford Card in Ice White and is a GSM (thickness) of 300. I always choose really thick paper for my drawings simply because of the amount of blending required. I usually do a good 5-7 layers of colour so remembering that the Polychromos are oil based, the paper need to be able to support that. Because the paper has a matte finish, it doesn't interfere with the natural progression of oil coating from the pencils. When drawing smaller portraits I literally just cut the paper down to size. I believe that Hobbycraft do supppy A4 sizes as I brought these for my Jack Dawson Sketch Book recreation last January (2015).

A1 Canford Card 300 GSM Brenton Thwaites

A1 Canford Card 300 GSM - Lana Del Rey

A1 Canford Card 300 GSM - Jack and Rose

Let's be honest, I bet half of you reading this didn't even know what GSM is... or that there was so many different kinds of paper. Just to make it easier for you - most cases, the thicker the paper the better.

I will leave some direct links down below:

• ANY coloured pencil/ graphite/ charcoal/ goal leaf* products - here 
• Oil Paints - here
• Water Colour - here