Acrylic skin (for Julie)

I think I never made acrylic skins before. I often marveled how simple it seems and how fun it must be, but I don't think I actually had that "push" to do it. Until I read Julie Fei-Fan Balzer's post yesterday. She wrote that she saw a technique in THIS video and was desperate to try it, but couldn't because she is traveling. I understood that feeling so well - when you see something and you itch to try it immediately, but can't because you are at work, or have other stuff that must be done... 

I thought I should do it for her, because at that moment I was at home, had the time and the few materials needed for it. You will see it in the video - you need gloss medium (I used Liquitex Gloss Gel), some dimensional paint in a squeeze bottle (I had Scribbles 3D fabric paint), and a page protector.

 After letting it dry overnight, I was able to peal a thin (rather sticky) transparent layer of black scribbles. How fun!

You can put it over anything! Here it is just laid over the bird painting I'm working on. You can see the brush strokes clearly, but they will be lost once they are layered in a finished piece. This is just a quick example, the "I must do it now" kind of thing. I can only imagine how cool can it be with different colors, thought out shapes... 

I used pieces of it already, but am not done yet, so here is just a snippet of it.

Let me know in the comments if you ever used acrylic skins in your art.

How to make a quick sketch/collage combo (real-time video)

Did anyone try to do the 3 minute sketch? As I said, I doesn't have to be good... the looser the lines are, the more interesting the result. I think this is the longest video I posted (13 min). Probably because I did not speed it up. I wanted you to see how quick this is. (OK, I did speed it at the end, but only because I had to thread the needle and it took me forever and because looking at someone sew random patterns on paper really is not interesting.)

 Here is the YouTube link, in case your reader does not show the video (I use Feedly and sometimes I see videos, sometimes I don't).

I hope you'll like it!

A fun technique to try

I usually don't have too much time for art on weekends, but try to sneak something in when I can. This is something I did on Sunday in less than an hour. I used my very inexpensive sumi ink and a brush, and on regular office paper very quickly made many sketches of birds. 

Working this fast and with a brush that I can't really control allows wonderful, imperfect characters to show up. And it is deeply relaxing, which for me is always a plus.

Now I have many drawings to play with. I chose a random one to add to my journal. Since the paper is thin, I simply glued it on - not worrying about the edges showing, and then painted over it and around.

As silly as it is, I really love this face. I don't think I would have ever done it if I tried a more careful approach with my brush. 

I wanted to see if the ink will transfer - and it did! You can still see some paper fuzzies on the image bellow, but I was happy how quickly and how well it transfered to an already textured and painted background. 

So there it is... something quick and fast to try in your art journal.

I hope you'll give it a try.

How many times can I use the same image?

I was really happy that so many downloaded my free collage sheet, and was curious to see what can I make using the images from it. 

The challenge I made up for myself was to create 10 different collages.

I used only the collage sheet (actually - several, I printed 3 copies), pages from a book, and materials that are always on hand (paint, markers, stamps, stencils).

This was fun! I loved it!

Painting over the image changed the character of the bird.

Here I added a cutout from another image to give the bird a second wing and used "ornaments" as parts for the tree.

Of course, I didn't throw away the bird that "lost" it's wing... 

Would you believe it - I made one without the birds! Surprised even myself :-)

I hope this gives you some inspiration, and would LOVE to see what you create.

Please share :)

xo

ATC technique and a giveaway

I stumbled yesterday onto THIS site and found a link to a tutorial for Intuitive Watercolor Wash Faces. It seemed like a lot of fun, and I could hardly wait to try it. 

The basic idea is to quickly add washes of color to watercolor paper, somewhat face shaped but very loose and free. You can see what my "faces" looked like after that first stage.

Then I spent some time playing with black and white inks and got this result.

This was really fun! More and more I love the feeling I get when creating without expectations.

I am going to sign up for the ATC swap at Art Colony, and three of my ATCs will go there.

Since I made more than three, I thought I might offer the forth one to one of you.

If you would like to win one of these four ATC cards, leave a comment with the card number you like the most and I will randomly pick a number on Monday morning.

Do you use nail polish?

Do you ever feel that you are having too much fun instead of doing something useful?

I felt like that today because I spent too much time on silliness, but I just couldn't stop. I started with an intention to make a simple journal page with my bird friend from yesterday's post. I wanted it to be quick, so I chose to use just a pencil, some inks and white casein paint. 

And then I don't know what possessed me to use nail polish as "paint". It's probably because I saw the bottles and the colors were so vibrant that I couldn't ignore them (my daughter's, not mine... my nails right now are covered in paint). 

As fun and silly as it was, I knew that I couldn't stand to look at this as a permanent page in my journal, so I went back with more paint and graphite. I'm not sure that this is how the final page will look like, but I really need to work on something more serious now (like preparing tax papers....sigh), so I'll stop playing. Although I really feel pulled to paint some black and white stripes on her neck....