Experiments

Experiments

Hello my dear friends,

Today I would like to share with you two of my latest creations - two mixed media art cards. Very different in style and the products I used but having in common the rich, vibrant colours and their visual impact I would say.

For the first one I started on a piece of heavy watercolour paper that I randomly covered with a coat of white gesso and while still wet I made some marks with a palette knife. When the gesso was dry I applied some Faber-Castell Gelatos (Red Cherry) and spread it with my fingers and a baby wipe. As you can see, the colour is richer in the places where the paper wasn’t covered with gesso.

For the second layer of colour I sprinkled black bister and brusho pigments (a tiny amount goes a long way as the pigments are very strong), spritzed them with water and let them dry naturally.

When everything was dry I created the circle pattern by removing some of the colour through a stencil using a baby wipe. This is a very easy to do step as both paints are water reactive after drying and were applied on gesso.

To finish my card I made some marks using a black super fine Pitt artist pen and did a bit of background stamping for extra interest. As a finishing touch I added some highlights using an extra fine white sharpie pen and stamped the word “transition” using a Donna Downey stamp.

*********

For a long time I wanted to try a product called Yupo paper which is a synthetic paper made out of 100% polypropylene. It’s a very versatile and amazing product to play with and you can achieve pretty fabulous results. You can play and experiment with lots of media on this “paper”, but you need to bear in mind that at the end of the day this is plastic, so a totally unabsorbant material.

A paint that is designed to work best on non porous surfaces is the alcohol ink, so this is exactly what I decided to use for my second card.

I started by dripping different colours of alcohol ink on my piece of Yupo paper and let the drops spread, blend and do their own thing. When this layer was dry I spritzed some 90% alcohol here and there, for a bit of visual texture.

After everything was completely dry, I draw the contour of the ginko leaves using a Crafters Workshop stencil and started doodling using different sizes of black Pitt artist pens and an extra fine point white Sharpie pen.

To finish my card I have stamped the quote using a Tim Holtz stamp and black Staz on ink.

Thank you so much for stopping by and don’t forget to check out my new Online Workshop, you can watch a video trailer HERE.

Have a fun and creative evening,

Much love,