why paper grain matters to an artist

Have you ever tried to fold a large sheet of paper preparatory to tearing or cutting it into two pieces? If you produced a neat clean fold then you were folding with the paper grain. If the paper cracked and was difficult to fold then you were working against the grain. It is a fact that most paper is made by machine nowadays and the pulp fibres tend to lie in a consistent direction. You can also find grain in artists' quality papers.

The nature of paper grain has long been known to bookbinders who regularly paste papers with a variety of glues. If the papers being glued do not have their fibres running in the same direction then the tensions within the book will tend to warp it.

These tensions can occur in different degrees when making collages or mounting drawings. If the paper is not treated properly it will not be possible to glue it in place without wrinkling and distortion occurring.If you want to make thin pasteboard-which can be very strong, then you should assemble the layers so that the grain of each sheet lies in the same direction. I will say more on this when I write about the making of glue and the practice of gluing paper .

There are many ways of determining paper grain. Which way does the paper fold easiest? That is the direction of the grain. This method works with large sheets of paper. Imagine a rectangular sheet. If it folds easiest from short side to short side then the grain runs parallel to that side and vice versa. If you have only a small square of paper then moisten it and see which way it tends to curl. The direction of curl is parallel to the grain.