Illustration Board - Tumblr Posts

One of my old assignments from freshman year. I had to do a retinal painting for 2D Design so I was allowed to choose Vermeer's "Young Woman With A Water Pitcher" for this assignment.

Honestly, I felt like I was just copying art when I worked on this, but I like how it came out and I still think it looks good after almost 4 years.

Long-awaited commission for firestorm152. She wanted a grayscale drawing of Predaking in his dragon mode and I finally completed it. I’m sorry I made you wait so long. 

Okay, so, because this has come up before, I’m going to write about making your own illustration board panels for projects. 

Lots of pictures and writing under the cut. 

So what is illustration board, why should you use it, and how and why do you make your own? 

Illustration board is a heavy cardboard panel with an art surface mounted to it.

Usually, it’s mat board with some kind of watercolor or bristol paper as your drawing or painting surface. Some really high end versions are actually sections of very heavy paper instead of , but those aren’t what I’m concerned with right now. 

The reason why you’d want to use it is that it provides a relatively cheap, stable surface on which to paint. You know that thing where paper gets all crinkled up when you use watercolor or ink wash on it? That action of crinkling up is called “buckling,” and frankly, it’s a pain. There’s a lot of different ways to avoid it, though, and illustration board panels are one of them.

Another good reason is that it’s possible to paint on an illustration board with paint that cracks if it gets flexed around, like casein. Additionally, illustration boards are great for anything that requires a stable surface.

So why would you make them yourself? Well, I have two major reasons. The first is cost. When you're starting out as a traditional artist, affording good materials can really be a hurdle. A lot of illustration board can get fairly costly, especially if you need to have a lot of it. 

The other major reason is that if you're making it yourself, you have control over what drawing surface you're getting. As I mentioned before, the vast majority of illustration board comes in either watercolor or bristol surfaces. I started making my own when I wanted a particularly rough, brown paper that simply wasn't available in board form, and to my delight, it turned out to be pretty easy to make.

The other cool, useful thing you can do is that you can mount artwork you've already done to a mat board using this method, which can be super useful for making work that stays flat and looks professional.

So I wanted to prepare 30 bristol illustration boards for my Huevember paintings. Here’s what I start with:

This is recycled mat board that I rescued from the dumpster of the art school I work for. I cut 30 pieces to the size I needed using my paper guillotine, but you could also use a mat cutter. Absolutely none of them are the same, so I would have no control over surface if I just started painting on them.

And this is vellum surface bristol paper:

Before I ever start the mounting process, I figure out how many boards can fit on a page. In this case, it’s 3. After that, I move to my secret weapon:

3M Super 77. I have tried many different spray adhesives over the years, and nothing seems to have worked as well as this stuff. Remember to wear a breathing mask when using it! Also, because I don’t want industrially sticky overspray on my studio floor, I put down plastic first. The next tool you need is something you can use to roll and apply pressure between the mat board and the paper. In this case, I am going to use one of my printmaking rollers.

You can also use a rolling pin. All that matters is that you apply a lot of consistent even pressure across the whole surface.

So I lay down one sheet of my bristol with the side I want to be my drawing surface facing DOWN, I put out three boards on the plastic at a time, and I give them a generous spraying.

Now I don’t have a picture of the next step because it needs to be done quickly and it requires both hands. You carefully pick up the mat board by the corners, trying not to get sticky stuff on your hands, and you flip it over to place it on the paper. As soon as the two make contact, use your roller to press the pieces tightly together. Roll over it multiple times. You don't want the layers to de-laminate, or pull apart, on you. This has happened to me a lot, frequently after I've drawn or painted on something, and 99% of the time, it is the fault of the adhesive. I've learned to not take chances though.

Once the layers are laminated together, I like to cut the edges as cleanly as possible on a self-healing mat with an exacto knife. The best technique for this is to put your knife tip as close to the mat board as possible and keep pressure on it as you pull it down the side.

Additionally, you can use a guillotine:

Mm nice clean edge.

So in the end, I have 30 pieces of illustration board with exactly the surface I want to draw and paint on for this project. 

In the end, I saved myself around $25. I hope this is helpful to someone. Thanks for reading.