Backgrounds and Textures

 On the spur of the moment, I signed up for Jane Dunnewold's Backgrounds and Textures on-line class. I know, I am too busy and have enough to do, but a friend signed up and I did too!

I have some of Jane's books and have watched her on You-Tube and she is a very thorough and encouraging teacher. I have actually done most of the techniques before but the course is reminding me of the techniques and it is something I have wanted to do more of lately.

We made our own stamps using cardboard at first, she is encouraging us to use what we have rather than spend more money on supplies.

Some of them worked better than others but I don't want to go down the rabbit hole of making more and more stamps, I'd rather see what works and then make some that suits what I want to do in my work. We were painting and stamping onto the gelli plate first and then taking prints from there.

The stamps go really well on paper., but I was happy with the results on fabric as well. On fabric, you have to be sure to get the right amount of paint. I was also experimenting with textile paint compared to normal acrylic with fabric medium added to it. I think that the stiffness of the fabric was only slight with both. I'll have to try sewing on them to see what the real difference is.

I made some more collage paper using deli paper, because I discovered when doing some collage recently that I really like thin, transparent papers.

They don't look very good as big pieces but they come alive when cut or torn into smaller bits. I've also done prints using normal printer paper, I love the different textures.

We also learnt how to draw an image onto the Gelli plate using acrylic paint pens and then printing the image. Here is my little butterfly on the Gel plate.

Here is the butterfly printed onto paper with a background as well.

You can see that the gel plate resisted the paint pen a bit but I could now paint another layer the butterfly. I am not sure if I'd use this technique though. I could have just drawn the butterfly onto the paper in the first place, but maybe it would give a different look. I suppose that means you would have to do further tests and compare the results.

I decided to try the same technique on fabric, I forgot to take progress photos but here is the dragonfly printed on fabric and I have thread painted over the top.

The background is paint, I don't think that I'd like to quilt it, but I'll try.

The reason I have experimented with butterflies and dragonflies is that the topic this month in the Waverley Art Quilters is Insects.

That's what I've been up to, as well as driving to Kyabram for the exhibition, I'll be back in Kyabram this Thursday as well. 

Bye for now,

Linda