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

Revisiting old techniques - watery layers with wax resist

I'm still going back to old layering paint techniques and adding other layers to them. This time I also mixed my paints for nearly every layer, I just love experimenting with colours to see what appears.

Process steps

1. Seal substrate with gesso.

2. Mix dark pinky red using quin red, titan buff, titanium white, burnt umber, paint layer over the whole surface, splatter water droplets, heat a little, soak up excess water with kitchen roll.

3. Repeat by adding diarylide yellow and pyrrole red to the left over mix.

4. Repeat by adding titan buff, titanium white to the mix.

5. Rub wax over the surface, paint a layer of titanium white only, heat gently and rub away with kitchen roll. If not enough rubs away  carry on heating small areas and rubbing in the opposite direction until you are happy with it.

6. Repeat step 5 several times by lightening the colour each time and also experiment with not heat drying the surface at the end.

 Having got the painty layers for your background - you could go on to add more layers with some stamping ..............

 ............. transfers or rub-ons .............

........ some die-cuts ...........

............... some stamped ephemera or images ..........

................... a vintage photo ....................

...... or maybe a completely different set of further layers. These were just for ideas.

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. 

Technique Tuesday # 7 - Marbling with Fluid Media Acrylics - DecoArt.

 #7

For this technique I used one off the tear-off palettes which has a lovely slippery smooth surface.

Add a drop of 2 colours quite near each other - here I used cadmium red hue and Hansa Yellow Medium.

Spritz with water and let colours gently come together.

Dip your card into the mix quickly before the colours blend and mix .....

..... and reveal some marbling effects.

This is one I tried with green gold and phthalo turquoise.

This just goes to prove you can get watery marbling effects with just water but I will admit the patterns are not so intricate as they are with other methods.

If you want to pin - here is the graphic.

Thanks for stopping by on another technique Tuesday and all the lovely comments you left on the Weathered Wood Crackle last week.

See you soon.

hugs Brenda xxx

Technique Tuesday #6 - Weathered Wood Crackle - DecoArt

#6

1. Coat the substrate with gesso to seal it and then apply a coat of tinting base and cobalt teal mixed together.

2. Apply a layer of candle wax and then paint a layer of tinting base mixed with cobalt teal and yellow green light, heat dry and rub with a piece of kitchen towel to expose some of the colour underneath.

3. Mix some quinacridone and paynes grey together to create a 'dirty wash' and paint it over the surface. You will see the wax repel it but take a heat gun and a piece of kitchen roll and dab and dry it at the same time to create these dirty speckles.

4. Apply a yer of weather wood crackle medium which will also be repelled by any wax residue, let it dry naturally or help it along with some gentle warmth from your heat gun held high and away from the surface. You'll see where it is from the shine left on the substrate.

5. Apply some more candle wax randomly over the surface - remember the places that you rub hardest will be the areas that should be exposed. Now apply a layer of titanium white. You'll almost immediately see some cracking appear from the weathered wood. Leave it to continue cracking naturally for a few minutes ......

6. .... then repeat the drying and rubbing process as in #2 above. I didn't get as much cracking as I wanted and I think there were two things that prevented this - one is I probably rubbed in too much candle wax and should have kept more of the area free from it and two, I overworked the titanium white when I painted it on - but practice makes perfect.

7. I finished by blending over some ground espresso distress ink and spritzed it with water ....

8. .... before dabbing and drying it at the same time to achieve a more grungier look.

But of course you could leave it nice and shabby clean looking as in step 6 if you wanted to and seal it with a coat of ultra matte varnish. To seal the grungier one use a spray dealer like the DecoArt Americana spray sealer.

Here's the graphic if you are pinning the series.

Products used are mostly from DecoArt - 

Tinting Base

Media Acrylics - Cobalt Teal, Yellow Green/Gold, Titanium white, Quinacridone Gold and Paynes Grey.

Weathered Wood Crackle Medium

These can be bought from Country View Crafts.

Thanks for stopping by today and for all the lovely comments you are leaving on the techniques each week.

See you again soon.

hugs Brenda xxx