When I was a kid I did a craft project at either Sunday School or at regular school where we drew with crayons on sandpaper and then ironed it onto plain white paper for this cool waxy semi transparent stained glass effect. It would have been the early 80s and I have no recollection of who did this with us but I do remember my poor mom having to deal with me being obsessed with trying to recreate it and also her keeping me away from her iron.

Anyway, I think that other than actually using sandpaper for sanding purposes that was the last time I ever thought about sandpaper as a creative tool.

Until I started back down this path with trash printmaking.

Sandpaper is great for adding all sorts of different textures to a plate. From little dots to parallel lines, to swirls and scrubby textures. All of them added to the plate in different ways.

For dots, a super coarse 40 grit is laid down over the plate, grit side down, and a bone folder, back of a sharpie, spoon, or other hard tool is rubbed over the back of the sandpaper. The grit bites into the plate leaving small dots. Move the sandpaper, repeat. Shadow and shade is created by repeatedly imprinting the sandpaper into the plate. The 40 grit paper leaves uneven sizes of holes. 60 grit leaves a more even hole. While 80 is even more even. 100 doesn’t leave much of an imprint. In this case 40 and 60 grit are the best choices.

For creating dark areas or lines, the plate can be sanded. This works on tetrapak and carton. 40 grit leaves a very coarse line while 80 leave a fuzzy line. 100 leaves a dull grain that leaves a gray tint to the plate and on the print. 40 and 60 can create the look of grass and vegetation, while 80 can make storm clouds.

If sandpaper is moved very carefully across a plate you can get even parallel lines and then if you turn your plate 90 degrees and carefully drag sandpaper again, you get cross hatching. 

Anyway, sandpaper has a lot of really interesting uses especially when you have some of the more aggressive grits like 40,60, and 80.