Creative Experiments 1.3

Well, I'm back with another creative experiments post. Yeah. I've been having a lot of fun with this series, and I intend to keep it going for a while. It seems like it's such a vast variety of things going for it, that it makes it an almost unstoppable series. So I'm back for the third time with another post about experimentation with white acrylic paint. This time I was trying to use it as a substitution for gesso (making a good base) and also as a texture paste type substance. I started with the page on the left. I just used white acrylic paint and used a brush to stroke it on very heavily. Then I used the handle of the brush to draw swirls in the paint.

I made several notes about this one. Number one being that it dried very quickly, making it very tough to draw enough texture. It just didn't work very well in my opinion. I didn't like it so well. Also, the texture was the same as paint, then the texture drawings sort of merged into each other. There wasn't that much texture after it dried. The second thing I tried was setting the white paint out for a little while (a couple of hours) and THEN painting it on in the same way. It actually had a LONGER drying time, and it kept the texture. This one I was in LOVE with.

After I'd put on the base layer/experimental layer of white acrylic paint, I decided to use red, orange, and yellow water soluble chalk pastels to make a nice background to work off of. It turned out really good. I love the way the color blend so perfectly, and the way you can totally see the texture; especially on the right side. As you can see, the left side didn't really go that well. Even after I added ONE TRANSLUCENT layer the texture started to disappear. It was disappointing, but I really like the way the right side looks. Now I know that you have to leave the white acrylic out for a couple hours. And it works just fine.

Here is a bit of a close up of the right side. You can definitely see the texture in this piece; the swirls are the parts that I scratched into the paint with the end of the paintbrush. You can see it worked just fine.

And here is the finished page. I did a TON of layers on top of it. I like the way it looks, though I may just add a bit more color in yellow or orange in pastel on top of all these layers. You know? It just feels a little dull; not very vibrant. If you look at the title, you can see the words; Feed the Flames. The journaling part says: Summer 2011; A time to experiment, create, and EXPLORE!! This was for the first prompt of a free art journaling course. You can find that here: Art Journaling Course. It's a really cool course!!

One last picture before I leave today; a close up picture of the center of the pages so you can sort of see the comparison. See the difference? I love it, even though it's just an experimental page. I hope you guys liked this post; thanks for looking!!