Tuesday 19 May 2020

Stencilled background with acrylic paints - new technique

I have been revisiting old techniques and posting them recently but this one came out of the blue and is now a new technique I'm sure I will call on often.
I was so excited at the results of the layers building this background and made it into a card for this post.

Process steps

1. Scrape a layer of tinting base over the card using a palette knife.
2. Mix a watery wash using the most tiniest pin prick amounts of cobalt teal and grey paint. Dip and dry.
3. Into what is left of the wash add a tiny amount of primary yellow and repeat step 2.
4. Mix a new wash of prussian blue and repeat step 2.


5. Add tiny dots of the yellow, cobalt and prussian blues on a palette. Take a stencil, a small blender with blending foam and a water spritzer. Spritz over the stencil so water goes through onto the background, pick up tiny amounts of one or two of the colours at a time and blend through the stencil and dry.
See this technique also stepped out for a Spring card.


6. Use embossing powders and a text stamp for interest.
7. Spread some resist paste randomly over and paint over a layer of olive grove leave to dry.
8. Rub away with dry kitchen towel and a wetwipe to reveal most of what is underneath again - some of the original background seemed to fade - did I rub too hard?
9. Repeat step 7 using eternal chalk paint this time.
10. Repeat step 8.
11. Scrape some random patches of white crackle paste around the edges and leave to dry.
12. I found that some of the crackle dropped off when I went back to it and I'm sure it must have been because of the resist paste, so I gave it a coat of soft touch varnish and again left to dry. That sealed it in place.


I also made a technique bord using different colours
step 2 - phthalo turquoise and medium grey.
step 3 - add naphthal red
step 4 - prussian blue.
step 5 - create different mixes using naphthal red, diarylide yellow, cerulean blue, prussian blue, titanium white, titan buff - going back over the shapes with different blends of colours to create overlays and depth.


Love the Moroccan/Spanish feel to the design and to see what different effects can be achieved.


xxx