Pen and ink over gesso

I had this idea that I wanted to do some pen and ink drawings over gesso and decided to revisit the dandelions and seed head drawings I did earlier in the year - (here) and this is what I came up with.

I took a Tando Creative media board and scraped gesso over it with a palette knife and let it dry - I did help it along a little bit with a heat gun 'cos when I when I get an idea I want to get going on it - impatient me????? I then took a thin sharpie pen and set about drawing, I was really pleased how well the sharpie drew over the textured surface.

I took a small text stamp and black archival and stamped over the bottom of the image and even added a little of my own writing to help out the balance of it.

Now came the test - will it cope with water being spritzed all over it? Yay, yep it was absolutely fine and having mixed my own custom colours of DecoArt media paint I just dripped them into the water and they spread around beautifully. In some cases I spritzed a little more and dabbed away with a dry paper towel as well.

I wanted the edges to be vintaged and create a frame around the board so I sanded all round and then blended ground espresso distress ink along all four sides. I flicked on a little water to distress it more before heat drying. 

I finished by painting the stems very lightly and dried it off. When full dry I sprayed with Americana gloss spray.

The frame is one from Ikea which has deep sides and for some reason (I don't know why!!!!) I decided to turn it back to front to add the media board so it sits in the recess with the glass over it and the little metal retainers are on show. You know what I really quite like it.

I think I might try some more and make a set of them.

Thanks for stopping by, have a great week and wishing all my American friends a great 4th of July.

hugs Brenda xxx