Tuesday, November 16, 2010

Shorebirds -- An "Everything But The Kitchen Sink" project

You haven't heard from me in a couple of days because I've been working on this. I tweaked the photo on Sunday and painted yesterday -- how fun is that!

The photo and various textures are free-to-use (Creative Commons) images tweaked in PSE 8. The mixed-media was done with Liquitex acrylic paints and media. I got a couple of ideas for textures from Sarah Whitmire's "Altered Journals" class through Joggles.com. The piece is 9" x 12" on canvas board.

Photo:
Layer 1 (shorebirds) by fontplaydotcom
Layer 2 texture by SkeletalMess overlay mode 35% opacity
Layer 3 texture by SkeletalMess hard light mode 55% opacity
Layer 4 texture by Paree' multiply % opacity
Layer 5 Contrast Color filter (Color Efex Pro 3.0)
Printed on Epson Enhanced Matte Paper on my Epson R1900 printer

Paints and Gels and Textures, Oh My! (from background forward)
  • one coat Liquitex gesso
  • full-strength soft body acrylics: vivid lime, brilliant blue, emerald green, phthalocyanine blue (green shade)
  • messy handwriting stamp with StaZon midnight blue
  • Liquitex Ceramic Stucco applied thinly with a palette knife
  • thin wash of lime and phthalo blue thinned 1:3 with water, iridescent medium
  • cheesecloth "dyed" with dilute phthalo blue, dried and adhered with matte medium
  • dry brush highlights in rich copper, lime/phthalo/titanium white
  • photo adhered with matte gel
  • embedded with Golden heavy body titanium white and Liquitex glass beads medium
  • highlights with slightly diluted phthalo blue, lime, emerald green
  • one coat gloss medium
Enjoy!

4 comments:

  1. Wow, this sounds great fun. I have most of that stuff in my "art corner" did you print the photo onto paper or fabric...this has opened up so many ideas for something I printed onto a piece of fabric.I have been embroiderine, but I could do something like this on the border. You have stirred my creative juices Kathy

    ReplyDelete
  2. Dearest Shirley--I wish you lived closer, we could play with paints together! It is great fun, although there is some waiting time for the paint to dry. I usually paint a layer, then go upstairs to work on a quilting project.

    I printed this photo on paper, but it could have been done on fabric as well. I haven't tried doing the textures on quilt-weight fabric because my little brain says that quilts should be soft, but there's no reason you couldn't do it on a small art quilt. The paint does change the hand of the fabric (adding fabric medium could alleviate that somewhat), so I've been working on stretched canvas or canvas board because I don't care if that gets stiff. Funny how we get it in our heads that things should be done a certain way... :-) Cheers! Kathy

    ReplyDelete
  3. Wow, this is a great post with lots of information ... thank you so much.
    I am anxious to get working!
    Very best wishes,
    barbara

    ReplyDelete
  4. Hi, Barbara--

    Glad the info was useful! Have fun playing. Kathy

    ReplyDelete