You are here: Home / Archives for Mixed Media

Explosion in a paint factory

February 12, 2013 By 10 Comments

There’s a few reasons I’ve been a bit quiet on the blogging front lately.  We still have lots to do to sort out the house – this weekend I got the guest room to a state where we could actually have a guest to stay now.  It took a while as the bed had become a dumping ground for all curtains (the last house had 23 windows!), wardrobes, random clothes without hangers, empty hangers without clothes and teddy bears.  Adrian worked on the garage and even though you still can’t get a car in, he at least has everything in a much more organised state and knows where his tools are – something I’m sure you’ll all agree makes for a happy husband.

I’ve also been absent from the internet from time to time as the big mac (as we affectionately refer to my main computer) just would not remember the wifi settings at all after I upgraded it’s operating system.  Each time I wanted to get onto the internet, I had to remember the hideously complicated network name and password and set up the network from scratch as it would just forget all about it.  Irritating is putting it mildly, but after much Apple forum searching, I found a few ‘known issues’ and (fingers crossed) one of the fixes seems to have worked.

But probably the biggest reason I haven’t blogged much is down to paint.

Bloom-True-progress002

One of my Christmas presents (from me to me) was an online class.  It’s called Bloom True and the teacher is Flora Bowley, an artist I’ve admired for a while.  I just missed out on taking a real class with her a couple of years ago and I was actually gutted to realise she’d come over from the States and been teaching in the Yorkshire Dales, less than half an hour away!  [Flora, please come back and teach here again ...?]

Anyway, her style of painting is very intuitive and free and from some of the comments I’ve seen from other class participants, it’s a step outside the comfort zone for a lot of people.  For me, it’s like coming home – it is everything I hoped it would be and I am absolutely loving it.

Bloom-True-progress001

These are all unfinished underpaintings.  The process involves many layers and things change a lot as you go.  There’s a lot of trust and letting go of control and expectation and she encourages you to work BIG.

 

 

Bloom-True-progress004

I have a large piece of watercolour paper which I use at the end of a painting session to use up any excess paint.  It might become a journal when I’m finished.

Bloom-True-progress003

This is week 3 of a five week course and I think the plastic carpet protector will just about last until then!  I love having cream carpets, but it’s not the most practical of floor coverings when painting on this scale.  I also put it over my table so I don’t worry about splashes of paint on it.

I’ve become quite adept at the quick change act from craft space to art space and back again.  Lesley and I made birthday cards for her hubby on Sunday after I spent Saturday flinging paint around.  This was my card featuring our steampunk stamps coloured with ColourSoft pencils.  I added some grey shading around it to make it pop with my imaginary light source coming straight down from the top.

Davids birthday card

If my wifi problems are finally over, then I hope to get back to a more regular blogging schedule.  We have new stamps coming out this week which I think you’re going to love.  I’ll also be picking a winner on the DT blog this Friday too, so if you missed the news about the giveaway, click here for the post.

Filed Under: Blog, Cards, Mixed Media Tagged With: , ,

A Charming Patina

December 19, 2012 By 2 Comments

We have had a lot of cool new products on the website lately and I have been a little bit like a kid in a sweet shop.  One of the recent additions was the Vintaj Patina kits and I need to go public and state that I am officially in love with them.  I was so impressed with the gold and silver that I decided to get the colours in.  I have used them on metal charms, but did you know that they can be used to create a resist too?  Here’s some charms that I painted and you can see there’s a range of finishes from the slick shiny black of the top hat to the chalky verdigris finish on the filigree embellishment.

All these charms started out as plain brass or metal – click on the image to see an enlarged version.  As you know we also now have the Dylusions sprays on the website and I used a mixture of the patinas and Dylusions on the block behind the charms which was painted first with crackle paint.

I still haven’t fully explored the possibilities with these Patinas, but I love what I’ve seen so far.  They clean up with water and mix with water based products and a little goes a long way.  They contain a little ball and need shaken up before use like a lot of metallic products do and they come in the same type of bottle as the Ranger alcohol inks which means they have a fine tip, but they are liquid so don’t hold a rigid shape if you ‘draw’ with the bottle.

They are waterproof when dry and this means you can paint with them, then add a wash of colour over the top and your patina will stay put creating a resist type look.  I only know that from the scrap paper under my work when painting these charms, I haven’t actually put that little nugget of information to a creative use – yet!  (I’m thinking cut’n'dry and stencils …)

I’m starting to sort through my craft stuff ready to pack away and I’m building three piles.  The ‘definite keep’ pile, the ‘stuff to get rid of’ pile and there’s a third one evolving, which is ‘stuff I want to keep, but not pack up in the hope I’ll get time to play with it over the holidays’ pile .

Guess which pile is biggest (hint, it contains the Vintaj Patinas)!

signature

 

Filed Under: Blog, Mixed Media Tagged With: ,

Punky Rose

November 30, 2012 By 8 Comments

We’re launching our Stamp of the Month for December today – Steampunk Butterfly – which you can see over on the Design Team blog or on the website.    This little mixed media wood block uses the punky rose from the set, which I just adore.

This is created on a wooden stamp handle about 4 inches/10cm square.  I’ve used paint, crackle paint, Tim Holtz tissue and distress inks on it.  I stamped the rose onto it, painted over the outline with gesso (not being too precise about the edges), sanded it and stamped over the dry gesso with archival ink.

I started off with pastel pencils which I then painted over with Glue ‘n’ Seal which mixed with the pigments in the pastel and created an interesting paint like substance on my brush.  I stamped the fragment with Brilliance Moonlight White and keys with Versamark and used PanPastels over them and around the edges.  I love the way the PanPastel picked up the keys and the fragment in the background.

There’s an exciting line up of artwork coming up this month on the DT blog and if you leave a comment either here or over there, you’ll be entered into the draw to win the Steampunk Butterfly stamp set or our new mini Christmas Words stamps.

new mini Christmas word stamps – available separately or as a multi buy

I’m going to be blogging a series of Christmas cards next week so if you still have yours to make, I hope I can provide a little inspiration along the way.

Filed Under: Blog, Mixed Media Tagged With:

Ancient Art

July 16, 2012 By 8 Comments

I have a beeswax melting pot that I got years ago when I used to do a lot of silk painting and used to use it to do batik with paraffin wax.  I recently excavated it from the depths of a cupboard because I had some thin pieces of wood from the storm damaged shed in the garden and wanted to try creating a piece of art with them.

I’ve seen Suze Weinberg demonstrating some fun techniques with wax at shows, so thought I’d give it a go.  I have some collage paper which features ancient paintings of faces (possibly Roman mummy portraits) and one in particular had a background a very similar colour to my wooden panel.

So I got my hot wax and had fun splodging wax around.  I used a heat tool to move the wax around or smooth it, then when almost set, I used one of the stamps from Dusky Damask to stamp into the wax in places.  I added some mosaic tiles and a piece of paper clay then used Perfect Pearls to highlight the texture.

I added a little Pan Pastel along the way and love the idea that I was using ancient materials – pigment and wax – on a piece with an ancient theme.  I brushed the pastel onto the wax then heated it with the gun and the colour broke up and swirled around in a quite mesmerising way.

It proved rather difficult to photograph as the texture and sheen are hard to capture, so I’ve taken some close ups at different angles.  The wood has a wonderful mix of colours from weathering and the original stain and lots of texture around the edges.  The wax has encapsulated all of that and the colour is actually a very rich and glowing mixture of bronzy browns.

Click on any of the images to enlarge.

I used the long border stamps from Dusky Damask around the edges of the picture and bedded some mosaic tiles into the warm wax, then added another layer of wax over them.

Filed Under: Blog, Mixed Media Tagged With: , ,

For Dads and cyclists

June 18, 2012 By 16 Comments

I had an idea for a crazy landscape featuring a number of the Steampunk stamps and while playing around with it, came up with this version for my Dad’s Father’s Day card.  He’s always been a keen cyclist and used to cycle competitively – even to the extent of shaving his legs I believe!  I used to cycle a lot myself when I was younger and can relate to the common desire to upgrade to the next model up.  For those who don’t know their bicycle history, the Victorian Gentleman featured here is riding a velocipede (the “boneshaker”) – an early model with the pedal attached to the front wheel.  It was mainly made of wood and was extremely uncomfortable, but when the Penny Farthing came out a few years later they were very expensive for the average man on the street.  Did you know the front wheel was custom made to suit the rider’s leg length?  No, I didn’t know that either – isn’t the Internet an amazing vat of trivia!?!

Anyway, Dad liked the card, but here is the original in full technicolour.  And I mean FULL on colour!

I originally intended folding it up and making it into a concertina book, but Adrian loves it so much, he’s asked me not to fold it, but just mount it up as it is.  If you click on it, you can see it at 1000 pixels wide if your screen goes that big.

The colouring is mainly Polychromos pencils, though the sky is PanPastels and the hills have some PanPastel on them too.  The sunburst is done with masking paper strips and pan pastels.  The paper is some thick watercolour paper that I’ve discovered is rubbish for actual watercolour, but it does take the PanPastels and pencils beautifully.  I learned one valuable lesson while colouring this – when colouring heavily with pencils, be careful if you rub over them.  While rubbing in the sky, some of the blue pencil from the balloon also got spread around.  Next time I will use my burnisher pencil over the top to ‘seal’ in the colour.

I know it’s a day late, but here’s to all the Dads – the loved ones and the missed ones.

http://glendawaterworth.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/11/signature.jpg

 

 

Filed Under: Blog, Cards, Mixed Media Tagged With: , , ,

Origami Landscape

May 7, 2012 By 14 Comments

I created this canvas back in February and after I first created it, I knew that I wanted to turn it into a landscape with trees. I found some Japanese origami paper in my stash and thought it would be fun to create some trees from it, but changed my mind and decided that I would use torn strips of it to create hills instead.  The trees were made from dictionary paper coloured with PanPastels and the flowers are newspaper coloured in the same way.  I used a Black Soot Distress Marker to add some shading to the base of the tree trunks and around the edges of the flowers and put a big blob of Black Diamond stickles into the centre of each one.

This is what it looks like now.

I’m going to re-photograph it in better light as it doesn’t look very in focus to me.  Possibly because I left the camera on the manual settings after trying to capture a huge owl at dusk that had landed on our neighbour’s wall the night before.  It was getting pretty dark, so we were there with the tripod and the long lens, adjusting the camera’s settings for low light and using the remote control to minimise any camera shake on the long exposure that was necessary.  Half an hour later we were excitedly downloading the photos from the camera to find we had lots of very blurry dark shots, but one or two that clearly showed that we had spent a good twenty minutes photographing a wooden decoy!

Our suspicions were confirmed the following morning – the owl hadn’t moved a millimetre!  I’m pleased to say we saw the funny side – in fact we howled with laughter.  Howled … get it?  H-”owl”-ed!!  Yeah, ok, I’ll leave the bad puns to Adrian.

Related Posts with Thumbnails
Filed Under: Mixed Media Tagged With: , ,
«Older Posts