Technique Tuesday #4 - Dirty Glaze - DecoArt Media

Quite often when making a grungy piece of art I will need to seal a background or an embellishment and often I will use matte medium or ultra matte varnish on their own, but there are other times when I have something that has white or a light colour in it whether that be stencilled or painted and I want to knock back the brightness. You can of course make yourself a 'dirty wash' as Andy calls it which works absolutely perfectly but if you want to seal it at the same time how about a 'dirty glaze'?

Here's a grungy background with some white gesso stencilled on it (left purposefully like this to help you see the changes).

Here I have made a blue/grey glaze by mixing matte varnish (you could use gloss if you wanted to), paynes greay and raw umber, you only need the most tiniest amounts to colour it up.

This is a more yellowy brown glaze that I mixed up a few months ago and is kept in an empty media pot. I can't remember the colours I used but it look like it could be burnt umber, yellow oxide and perhaps some paynes grey as well - it really doesn't matter because you can mix whatever shade you like with the media acrylics and varnishes.

Here I have painted over the little background I made with the glazes and I'm sure you can see which half belongs to which glaze. They have both knocked back the brightness and have sealed the substrate and paint layers at the same time.

I hope you find this useful in your art work. Here's a graphic if you are pinning the techniques.

Thanks for stopping by, I hope you are enjoying the series.

hugs Brenda xxx