Encaustic Play day

I had the day off today and after having coffiee with my friend, Rebecca and her mom, I came home and played with my encaustic wax. I still am pretty bad at it but really like the possibilities (if I could just learn how to use it right). As the wax, has a shine to its surface, these pictures came out pretty bad. They are done on small panels that I bought at Michael's in their wood craft department. If I was planning a large piece, I would probably have to go to Home depo and get a good piece of wood, but these small pieces, this thin wood board worked great and was very cheap!

The close-up on the panel on the left is my favorite. I stamped the image of a fern leaf into the wet wax.

Sharon

Monoprinting: a little more successful

Last night I tried using Golden's OPEN acrylics again for monoprinting. I VERY quickly doodled a design (I didn't want to do anything requiring a lot of work as I wasn't sure if it would work out at all.) In the middle is my "design". I placed it under a piece of plexiglass and applied the paint. The example on the right is the first pull. The colors were strong but some areas didn't have great color transfer. I went back over it in areas with a wet brush and as the acrylics were still a little wet, I was able to blend colors a little more.

The image on the left is a second pull. This time I soaked the paper in a water bath as I would if I was monoprinting with inks. I bloated the paper dry between two paper towels and then layed it over the inked plate.

Two other things that I did was I used the back of a wooden spoon to burnish the images and really get a a good transfer of paints and I also used a different paper. The first examples a few days ago were made using a textured, thick watercolor paper. This was much thinner Japapese paper. I used my covered pallette and the paints are still wet and usable this morning.

Torn paper on lutrador

This sample is on lutrador. I used one of the inkAid prints which I tore apart added some dark green and blue tissue paper.


Hopefully the uncovered lutrador will act as highlights in the final image and I will paint it with both black and white gesso.







Here is the painted stage...
I did add some white gesso on parts of the brown fairies. This will give some luminosity to the finished image???



I think I will keep trying the monoprinting with OPEN next. I signed up for some lecture demos at Binders in November with Patti Brady (I think that is her name), the Golden's national educator on using both Open and Digital ground. Hopefully, I can ask her some questions too.

Torn paper on Ricky Tim's stabilizer

This is a thicker paper that I ironed down to some of Ricky Tims' stabilizer sheets. It is a nice thickness for this type of work (I hope). As the paper was white, I didn't bother photographing the paper before I painted it. I threw some brilliant red brusho dye into the gesso and painted a little. It was a little too pink so I added some Arzo Gold.

Playing with torn paper on deco bond

One of the first examples in Maggie's book is creating a textured base. Here are some of my experiments.

This is a piece of deco bond. I added an additional layer of wonder-under as I find deco bond doesn't hold well. I ripped up pieces of green tissue and brown bag and ironed them down.

The second image has been painted with white and black gesso. Some areas of the paper have been left blank, but all uncovered areas have been painted. I will keep building layers with gels, and paint tomorrow.

Organizing my paints

I spent most of my day organizing my painting/mark making "stuff". The my oils, inkAid, and misc large stuff is on the top shelf. Mediums, gels, glues and such are on the second, acrylics, lumiere, textile, dyna-a-flow, and brusho paints are on the second, and on down the line!!! They were spread out over 5 rooms so it was getting hard to stay in the "zone" when I needed to get another type of paint.

Tonight I was too busy watching Ugly Betty to work in my art studio, so instead of talking about what I have been working on, I will write about the book I just bought! It is Maggie Grey's new book, Textile Translations: Mixed Media. You can order it (from the U.K.) at http://www.d4daisy.com/. Take a look it is great!

first try at monoprinting with Open acrylics

As you can see, my first try with using the new Golden OPEN acrylics for monoprinting didn't work. I tried using about the consistancy of printing inks, but almost nothing transfered. Then I wet it and that just bled. I will keep trying.

This is what the package says...

However, when I got home...

I found this cute little sample set in my mailbox from Golden! They are small but they will give me a good idea of how well they will work. Maybe tomorrow? Oh yeah, I still am working on the digital images, too.

I went out today to buy...

This morning I taught a needle-felting class at The Art Place. As soon as class ended, I ran up to Dick Blick to buy Golden's other new product line, Open Acrylics. I really like Acrylics these days because they are so versatile. So far, the biggest drawback has been that they dry too fast to do monoprinting. With this new line, hopefully, I will be able to do this. I have to admit that I am a little scared that they will take TOO long to dry now. Needless to say, I will try to document my experiences.

Golden's Digital Ground Sample Set

inkAid

This is the inkAid products.

Digital ground White Matte

Big difference from the brown background. I wonder what would happen if I added some color to the ground. I might send the question to Golden's. They are usually great about answering technical questions.

Plain Brown bag paper

This sample was not coated with anything, just run through the printer. Tomorrow I thing my samples will be of something more vividly colored.

Sample with Golden's Digital Ground Clear (Gloss)

Shiny - that is both good and bad thing. To anyone who knows me, I like bling; however, sometimes that isn't a good thing. As you can see from the plain paper. This did come out with deeper colors then plain brown paper. Hint: make a small "x" on the side you paint. I couldn't tell which side had been painted on one of my samples.

Santa In Progress

This is another pattern by "Seams like Home". I am teaching him at the quilt store where I work part-time, Tiny Stitches at the end of November and again in December. Isn't he cute! He is completely raw-edge applique.

Paper bags before printing

Here are two of the cut pieces of the plain brown shopping bag. First I cut out the bottom of the bag and ironed it flat. I then cut them to fit on a regular letter size sheet of paper as I thought it would be easier to feed through the printer. I attach each piece to a carrier. I did this by using a glue stick around the edges and attaching them to regular printing paper. I did iron them flat after gluing. Last night, only one of the 5 prints got stuck in the printer. On the right is inkAid's white matte precoat. It seems to be similar to Golden's Digital Ground White matte. The big difference was the InkAid needed to be stirred REALLY REALLY well before using. It has this thick chalk-like substance in the bottom that needed to be remixed. Golden's didn't seem to need it as bad. I just shook the bottle for good measure. Another consideration is both matte products went on clear. The directions say to it will "probably" need a second coat. After the first coat had dried, I had horrible brush strokes. I actually added a third coat to minimize the streaks! Tomorrow I will paint up a few more samples and I will try to remember to take a picture of what just one coat looked like.

Image to Stitch

I received Maggie Grey's book, Image to Stitch, a few weeks ago. Very cool. I only began really playing with it this weekend. Maggie recommends InkAid products to treat surfaces before sending them through the printer. I actually found them locally and at 50% off. The downside of that is the store was not planning on carrying them anymore. I bought up large bottles of most of their products. One of the reasons they weren't going to carry them was that Golden has come out with a similar product line called "Digital Grounds". They only had a sample pack to sell me, but off course I bought it as well. My first experiments are with brown bag paper. Unfortunately, my digital camara is out of "juice". I will post the pictures tomorrow (hopefully).

Isn't she cute? I taught her as a class at Tiny Stitches. What fun we had! She is actually a pattern from "Seams like Home", so I really can't take much credit for her. I have been working on her "partner" Santa. He is darling! I will be teaching him in November and again in December.
For those who know about my "planned" surgery, it was cancelled the day before I was set to go in to the hospital. The surgeon herniated a disk. It has been two weeks without any real answers from the doctor until today. I meet the new surgeon on Friday and hopefully will be scheduled again soon. Truthfully, I am feeling a lot better, but trying to stay close to home and rest.