Texture trial and error - Papier-mâché

So before I started doing proper paintings myself, I already knew I had a preference for textured art and was also interested in mixed mixture. At the time I didn't know much about the 'proper' materials to use, so I experimented. As I child, any time I wanted to create anything that was three dimensional I used papier-mâché. I think many of my peers did the same thing, since we didn't have Playstations and Facebook to bide our time with. I tried a lot of different papier-mâché methods, the old fashioned flour and water mixture, wallpaper paste, PVA glue and water, tissue paper, toilet paper, newspaper. Papier-mâché was definitely a cost-effective method, I managed to cover a rather large canvas for only the price of some tissue paper and a bottle of glue. It's also a fairly flexible medium, different types of paper resulted in varying types of texture and the tissue could be applied in as many layers as required. 

Mystical Dragonflies - One of my largest paintings, texturised with papier-mâché.

I found a few problems though. It was INCREDIBLY time consuming. I sat on the floor for hours and hours until my joints made me feel about 103 and was dismayed to find I'd only done a third! I persevered however, as I was pleased with the effect, and tried it on several more paintings, using combinations of different paper and glue methods. 


However, I discovered more disadvantages to this method. It turned out to be quite difficult to paint properly on the dried paper/glue mixture. A lot of the paint was absorbed by the paper, which created a bleed effect in some cases, and also used copious amounts of paint to get a decent coverage. Again this caused the process to become longer as every part I painted took longer. There was also crevices created by the dried paper which needed to be painted inside to avoid any visible patches. Even when the papier-mâché had fully dried and been painted and varnished, it did not form a solid structure. The paper peaks were quite flexible and could be easily crushed out of shape. Although I don't expect my paintings to be able to hold up to the strains of being used as a coffee table or aerobic step, I didn't want to risk that my designs could be so easily damaged.


And so.. considering all these elements... my search continued!