Revisiting old techniques - Water Distressed Layers

Here's another of my techniques and layer combinations using acrylic paints. I like to turn to these when needing some inspiration and I have been documenting them on media boards as a resource.

You will find them added to my Tutorials and step x steps page found on my sidebar.

This one - Water Distressed Layers - I taught at Ministry of Mixology in April 2019.

Process steps

1. Paint a coat of acrylic paint (phthalo green-yellow) and heat dry.

2. Paint a thickish coat of a different colour (I mixed PGY with some hansa yellow and titan buff) and splatter with largish water droplets. 

3. Start to heat the board but before the watery spots dry lay a piece of clean dry kitchen paper over it to absorb the water. It sucks up some of the paint that has mixed with the water and leaves these gorgeous splatter spots.

4. Repeat step two and three with a coat of another colour (I used the above colours with titanium white). 

5. Move straight onto step six or stamp some text first using archival ink.

6. Finally repeat steps two and three with titanium white. 

7. Finish with some brush splattering of the same colours (I used the last green that was still on my palette and added water to it).

You could leave the finished background looking clean or you could add a watery frame around it.

I'm loving making these technique boards into mini pieces of art.

xxx

Revisiting old techniques - Scraped Gesso Layer

I've devised a number of techniques and layer combinations using acrylic paints over the years and I am returning to them for inspiration and to document them on media boards as a resource.

This one - Scraped Geso Layer - I taught at Ministry of Mixology in April 2019.

Process steps

1. Seal substrate with a layer of gesso.

2. Tear and add some tissue tape.

3. Dip in watery colour/s and dry.

4. Stamp text and/or numbers using black archival ink.

5. Scrape gesso randomly and lightly over the surface using a palette knife keeping it flat.

6. Splatter using leftover watery paint.

7. Create a dark frame firstly dabbling and spritzing some watery burnt umber mixed with quinacridone gold - dry.

8. Mix neat quinacridone gold with paynes grey and slide the brush around the very edge and dry.

xxx

Revisitng old techniques - Messy painty layers

This post has been in draft form for over a year and not posted, so I've updated it and created one of my technique resource boards to go with it.

I used the DecoArt Premium range of acrylic paints and gesso on this, but it would work just as well with the Media range of paints and mediums.

Put some colours into a palette add some water and mix so that you can drop and splatter with them.

 Cover a piece of strong A4 card with gesso and immediately flick two of the colours over it.

Spritz with water and let colour move around - rub some in gently if it remains too thick.

 Press the substrate into the card and lift - you will transfer some squished gesso and colour to the surface.

Repeat this process using different colours. If the substrate seems too wet heat dry before pressing again.

Add a little more gesso as well as colours ......

Press and lift several more times ....

.... until you are happy with the results. Here is the journal and cover I made with it.

Here I tried  the same sort of technique but instead of using paints in the gesso I used Amsterdam acrylic inks.

I dipped and pressed the media board in it .....

.... and continued adding more gesso and inks to the card, dipping and pressing the board and drying between layers until I was happy with the finish.

Eh voila, quite a nice squishy background for the seahorse.

xxx

Revisiting old techniques - Distress layers with stamping

Here's another of my techniques and layer combinations using acrylic paints. I like to turn to these when needing some inspiration and I have been documenting them on media boards as a resource.

You will find them added to my Tutorials and step x steps page found on my sidebar.

This one - distress layers with stamping- I demoed at Stitches in January 2019.

Process Steps

1. Seal substrate with tinting base 

2. Dip, dab and dry each layer.  Layer 1 watery raw umber.. Layer 2 Add cobalt blue to mix. 

Layer 3 Mix cobalt blue and titan buff. 4 Add titanium white to the mix. 

3. Text stamp randomly over the background using hydrangea archival ink.

 4. Blend titanium white through a stencil. 

5.  Add next layer – mix wash of  paynes grey and titanium white – 

paint over and dab off with kitchen towel) 

6. Stamp bold figure with watering can and black archival ink - I used a stamp platform to get a good image.

7. Stamp text/numbers with white paint.

8. Sand and paint/spritz the edges using paynes grey mixed with raw umber.

That's another board in the resource box.

xxx

Revisiting old techniques - Distressed Gesso Layer

I've devised a number of techniques and layer combinations using acrylic paints over the years and I am returning to them for inspiration and to document them on media boards as a resource.

You will find them added to my Tutorials and step x steps page found on my sidebar.

This one - Distressed Gesso Layer - I taught at Ministry of Mixology in April 2019.

Process steps

1. Paint the substrate with any colour acrylic or chalk paint and before it is totally dry rub over it with a dry kitchen towel, this dries it quickly so you don't need a heat gun. I used Andy's Grey Haze

2. Take some gesso and a palette knife. Hold the palette knife horizontally flat over the substrate and gently drag the gesso over the surface. Don’t push down too hard. 

3. Repeat several times turning the substrate round in different directions to get an even random coverage and dry. Once dry you could add another layer of on top if you wanted more texture. 

4. Stamp some text over the top using archival ink and make sure it is dry before repeating step 2 again. but only using a very little gesso. This distresses and cuts up the text and pushes it into the background.

5. Dabble some watery prussian blue over the surface spritz with more water to move it about and hold up the substrate to let it drip then lay down again and just give it a little time for the watery colour to settle in the channels and dips before heat drying it,

6. Repeat with a little more watery wash but adding more blue to make it a deeper colour.

7. Finish by adding some splatters using the last of that deeper watery wash.

You can leave the 'clean' look or 'frame' the edges like I have on the Scraped Gesso Layer 

(see tutorials list on sidebar).

I also splattered some silver over the background and onto some grey haze painted stars to finish the board. 

Blending media acrylic paints - DecoArt Creative Team

This is a DecoArt Media Tea Encore post
I was working on a tag earlier in the year and wanted to create a soft vintage look with my media acrylic paints. I had covered the greyboard tag with a coat of gesso using a palette knife when an idea came to me - let's try using a distress ink blending tool!

I made up the tag and was so pleased with the results but creating in the moment I hadn't written down any explanation of what I had done nor what I had used but here's what the background looked like.

So I started out experimenting with some card tags for this post. The tags on the left were not primed at all and the tags on the right were given a thin coat of gesso using a palette knife.

These were a mixture of both opaque and semi translucent paints - Titan Buff O, Cerulean Blue ST, Green Gold ST and Yellow Oxide ST although I mixed some Titan Buff with the 3 semi translucent colours which made them more cloudier. I used the rectangular blending tool and foam, taking a small amount of each colour and blending from my craft mat onto the tag, just like you do with distress inks.

These were all translucent colours - Hansa Yellow Light, Cobalt Teal Hue, Phthalo Green/Blue and Cobalt Blue.

In this neutral palette were all opaques - Burnt Umber, Dark Grey V3, Medium Grey V6 and Titan Buff.

What I realised was that I used far too much paint on the blender foam, they moved around a lot and they were easy to use. What I also noticed was that  blending onto a gesso surface was much smoother and created more translucent colours. Mmmmm how could I improve on that?

So what else do we know about acrylic paints? They dry quickly, they are traditionally used by painters using brushes and these artists use sweeping strokes of colours to blend them together. They can be mixed with glazing medium to create more transparent layers which doesn't affect their drying time. Also by experimenting with the blending tool and blending foam I found the pads hold the paint well, give good coverage and are washable so they can be used again.

I cut some card to fit one of my journals and scraped a gesso layer over with a palette knife and left to dry. Gesso has a tooth to it to allow the paint to stick to it so I buffed the first piece with a soft cloth, it certainly gave it a bit more of a satin feel. I also swapped from the larger rectangular tool to the small circular tool and foam. I love the neutral palette so I chose Titan Buff, Medium Grey Value 6, Burnt Umber and Raw Umber.

The card on the left has two coats of titan buff and was rubbed with a soft cloth after each layer had dried. The card on the right has two coats of titan buff mixed 50:50 with glazing medium. When added to paint it gives more transparent layering effects and this just glided on with the foam pad and gives a much softer finish.

For the next layer I chose medium grey value 6. Immediately you can see how thicker the paint stays on the surface even with only one coat as the left hand side is. You need more paint on the foam for it to stick. Whereas the mix of paint and glazing medium on the right hand side has two coats and is still so soft and translucent and you need very little on the foam pad. I can see benefits for using both of these techniques.

For the third colour I chose burnt umber and repeated step two above but I forgot to rub the right hand card with a soft cloth between the layers and the paint beneath gave more tooth for the second coat to hold onto giving a deeper tone.

I finished with Raw Umber applying it mostly round the edges to frame each background. Again I chose not to rub the right hand card between the two layers of paint but I did rub both of them before I took each photo. On the right hand card I also rubbed my finger round the edges when applying the wet paint to blend it to an even softer finish.

So you see the effects I got from raw card, gesso, media paint and glazing medium. You can see some of the card has more texture than others from the gesso. I actually love all the effects.

To summarise there are four different outcomes and effects.
1. Blended acrylics on raw card.
2. Blended acrylics on gesso covered card.
3. Blended acrylics on gessoed card with buffing between layers.
4. Blended acrylics mixed with glazing medium and buffed between layers.

Have fun experimenting with other colours and if you want to see the original tag that started this all off you can find it here.

Here is a project made with one of the above samples. I introduced colour through the stamping and collage elements. You can see I stamped on the tag and painted in some of the swirls on the border.

Top Tip - the foam pads hold onto the paint really well so rub them off on dry paper kitchen towel or another dry cloth before moving on to the next colour.

Blending acrylic paints technique for DecoArt Media Design Team

I have a post up over on the DecoArt Mixed Media Blog today with a step by step outline of how I experimented with blending acrylic paints using a blending tool.

It all started when I made a vintage tag for Tag Friday on A Vintage Journey at the end of March. You may remember seeing it.

At the time I didn't record how I got that lovely creamy and smooth looking background with the media fluid acrylics, so I set about experimenting with different ways I could re-create it.

So if you have time to  be transported over to the DecoArt Mixed Media blog to see what I found out you'll find all the details there.

xxx


Updated from DecoArt blog

Instructions :

Here's what the original background photos looked like.

I started my exploration with some ordinary craft shipping tags. The tags on the left were not primed at all and the tags on the right were given a thin coat of gesso using a palette knife. I used the rectangular blending tool and foam, taking a small amount of each colour and blending from my craft mat onto the tag, just like you do with distress inks.

1. These were a mixture of both opaque and semi-translucent paints - Titan Buff, Cerulean Blue, Green Gold and Yellow Oxide although I mixed some Titan Buff with the 3 semi-translucent colours which made them more cloudier.

2. These were all translucent colours - Hansa Yellow Light, Cobalt Teal Hue, Phthalo Green-Blue and Cobalt Blue Hue.

3. In this neutral palette the acrylics were all opaques - Burnt Umber, Dark Grey Value 3, Medium Grey Value 6 and Titan Buff.

What I realized was that I used far too much paint on the blending foam, the paints moved around a lot but were easy to use. What I also noticed was that blending onto a gesso surface was much smoother and created more translucent colours. Mmmmm how could I improve on that?

I took a little time to think about what else we know about acrylic paints? They dry quickly, they are traditionally used by painters using brushes and these artists usually use sweeping strokes of colours to blend them together. They can be mixed with glazing medium to create more transparent layers which doesn't affect their drying time. Also, by experimenting with the blending tool and blending foam I found the pads hold the paint well, give good coverage and are washable so they can be used again. So I decided my next step was to add some glazing medium to see what difference that made.

I cut some card to fit one of my journals and scraped a gesso layer over with a palette knife and left them to dry. Gesso has a tooth to it to allow the paint to stick to it so I buffed the first piece with a soft cloth, it certainly gave it a bit more of a satin feel. I also swapped from the larger rectangular tool to the small circular tool and foam. I love the neutral palette so I chose Titan Buff, Medium Grey Value 6, Burnt Umber and Raw Umber.

4. The card on the left has two coats of Titan Buff. The card on the right has two coats of Titan Buff mixed 1:1 with glazing medium. When added to paint it gives more transparent layering effects and this just glided on with the foam pad and gives a much softer finish. I also started by rubbing with a soft cloth after each layer had dried but you’ll see what happened part way through.

5. For the next layer, I chose Medium Grey Value 6. Immediately you can see how thicker the paint stays on the surface even with only one coat (as the left-hand side). Because the paint is thicker you need more paint on the foam for it to cover. Whereas the mix of paint and glazing medium on the right-hand side has two coats and is still so soft and translucent and you need very little on the foam pad. I can see the benefits of using both of these techniques.

6. For the third colour I chose burnt umber and repeated Step 2 above but I forgot to rub the right-hand card with a soft cloth between the layers and the paint beneath gave more tooth for the second coat to hold onto giving a deeper tone.

7. I finished with Raw Umber applying it mostly around the edges to frame each background. Again I chose not to rub the right-hand card between the two layers of paint but I did rub both of them before I took each photo. On the right-hand card I also rubbed my finger around the edges when applying the wet paint to blend it to an even softer finish.

So you see the effects I got from raw card, gesso, media paint and glazing medium. You can see some of the cards have more texture than others from the gesso. I actually love all the effects.??
To summarise there are four different outcomes and effects.
1. Blended acrylics on raw card
2. Blended acrylics on gesso covered card
3. Blended acrylics on gessoed card with buffing between layers
4. Blended acrylics mixed with glazing medium and buffed between layers