Advantages to Taping your Pastel Paper to HardBoard

You may have noticed in my videos that I take the Ingres Paper out of a Pad and tape it to a piece of hardboard. You might be wondering why I do that as some may work with the paper in the pad.The first answer would be it's better to isolate the paper that you're using. If you if you start pressing on a pad you're going to press through the paper and start to damage the paper underneath. So I would always isolate the pastel paper you were going to be using. So that's the reason I tear it out.Now why I tape it onto a hardboard is to give it rigidity it makes it rigid and doesn't flop about which it would do of course if you didn't use it on a board. Hardboard is ideal because it's lighter, you could put it on a heavy drawing board but that's very heavy and you can't manipulate that and move it around. So I would always suggest something like hardboard or a very stiff cardboard but hardboard is ideal. I've always recommended it and I will always use it myself. You could use a clipboard if you wished. I wouldn't because I would find that to be a bit cumbersome to be honest as it has a big clip in it and that's going to get in the way.When I used to go to Flatford Mill and do workshops they used to give me these great big heavy boards. They were twice as big as A3 and they used to put them out on the desktops for the students. But what I used to do was to give them the outline drawing they needed already on a smaller hardboard backing so they didn't have to do it themselves. You can imagine if they had put them on the big boards they'd never have been able to move it. Which as you know is very important in my work. It's a very good reason to have a piece of board that is light enough and sturdy enough.I hope that information is useful. If you work with another drawing surface then let us know in the comments below.