On the Bench - Loving the Simplicity of Resin Resist

After having attended Creativeworld in Frankfurt, Germany, in February 2015 and meeting UK artist Jenny Muncaster there, I was intrigued by her use of Pebeo Glazing Resin as a painting element and resist for painting over. (See more of Jenny's work here: http://jennymuncaster.co.uk/) I've been playing with the technique in the studio this week and enjoying the outcome.

I'll be using transparent Vitrail paint over the green painting to highlight the background and really make the resin resist pop. Then...may decide to use Mirror Effect foil on the raised area; don't know for sure yet, just have to see what develops!

Happy Arting!  Tristina :D

No Paint Left Behind Play - Purple

After laying out some gorgeous Violet acrylic paint on canvas, I couldn't bear the thought of throwing the remaining paint water down the sink, so... grabbed some sample papers and an acrylic paper pad and went to town sloshing on washes. Then, I pulled out my favorite box of NeoColor II water soluble wax crayons and played with color combinations to see which were pleasing together.

Loving the light green Jade wax crayon on the purple background. What unexpectely beautiful combinations have you discovered while playing with color?

HAPPY (purple - teehee!) ARTING!  Tristina :D

Art Journal Inspired ATC's

Colorful Artist Trading Cards

I was so inspired by finishing up my art journal for The Sketchbook Project, that last weekend I decided to play with my art supplies before putting them away. I grabbed a pile of blank bristol paper Artist Trading Cards (ATC's) and went to town.

I made two sets of 3 cards, starting at 11pm, before I finally petered out at around 2am. The beautiful thing was that I didn't have to get up early the next morning...Yay!

To create a background for the first set of cards, I used Portfolio water-soluable oil pastel crayons. I love their rich colors and I just randomly grabbed some colors and rubbed them on the ATC's. Then, I used a soft damp brush to move the colors around and get them to penetrate the paper a little and blend. Next I grabbed my box of Derwent Inktense water-soluable pencils and scribbled on the surface just to add my artist's hand to the cards. I had many scraps of paper around my desk from The Sketchbook Project leftovers, so I tore small pieces of papers that interested me and used regular gel medium to glue them to the ATC's after they had dried.

I have a large collection of stamps from around the world (about 2000 that I bought in Paris a few years ago) that always come to mind when I have projects like this, so I grabbed out about 50 and found 3 that matched the background colors that I had already laid down. I added texture with acrylic inks and paint both under and over the stamps and adhered the stamps and some 3-D elements with regular gel medium.

I finished off these cards using a soft charcoal pencil around the edges of the card and/or stamps and in some of the texture created by the paints and papers.

It felt so good to get these 3 little works of art done, that I continued on to make 3 more ATC's with a different theme.

Flower ATC's

I started the two cards on the left with acrylic fluid inks; one blue on the bottom and gold on the top, then the opposite on the second. The third card was an experiment with sticky grid tape that I painted over with acrylic paints. For the two left cards I used scrap tissue paper I had painted left over from The Sketchbook Project, glued it down with regular gel medium and stamped words on after dry with StazOn ink. The third card I glued a piece of scrap paper to and added a word torn out of a children's book.

I am a crazy woman for having elements that pop off my artwork, so I went to my canister of colored Prima Flowers and started auditioning the different color combinations with the ATC backgrounds. The flower on each card is a combination of 2 or 3 paper flowers I adhered to the ATC and to each other with WeldBond glue. I found at scrapbooking stores some really cool multi-colored flat-backed plastic DewDrops embelishments that I also WeldBonded to the center of the flowers, then layed a light book/object on top of each card overnight to help the flower and dew drop stay in place while the glue dried.

The flowers were fully set in the morning...and I was In Love on the big reveal. <3

I hope I have inspired you to make your own small works of art...just for the sheer joy of it...and remember, ATC's are for sharing! Anyone out there want to trade with me? Leave me a comment. :)

Happy Art Making,  Tristina