OK so this is late being posted, although I did create it in February…just! I had the cardstock being used set up for WOYWW but the page was completed before the stroke of midnight LOL! The PM Artist Studio FB group posts a colour challenge each month. February’s was Prussian Blue and Yellow. Challenging indeed.
I tried to capture the steps, kinda. First layers:
Lots of yellows to block out the ugly cardstock design. Then more layers using a few home cut stencils
Layering lights and darks to lift it a bit with a touch of metallic
Big Bold Text (love that always) first in black then some yellow ones, and paint spatters to help incorporate the big letters better
and finally a scan of the final sheet. always captures the essence of it better than a photo
I wish the yellows were a bit brighter, but my brightest yellow is quite transparent. Maybe adding white to it would have helped? An experiment for another day!
Just a chaotic selection of stuff I have been playing with, while still not feeling 100% yet.
Where to begin? Let’s start with a further Teal+Purple play and a technique I played with first in 2013. Yikes. A full decade ago. Mixing up mic and glitter with gloss (or matte) medium then adding it thru a stencil on the gel plate
You don’t need much and mixing well is the real key. But it resulted in some interesting prints.
The last one, I laid the stencil over the clean gel plate then used a baby wipe to “clean it” – this forced a little pigment and a little mica/glitter into the opening which I was then able to pick up. All of them look much better in real life, I promise, the leaf in particular.
Then I also have a swap of ATCs I received, which was the first ATC swap I have done in AGES. I kinda miss it. Lovely getting art i the mail for sure. The envelope was very pretty too and totally going to end up as collage fodder.
And lastly, my own envelop for the swap items, where I used that glue-gun stencil I made ages ago.
Hard to see but man, I really like it. I am thinking of ways I might convert it into a stencil. I might be able to actually scan it, or I might be able to print with it maybe with black to make it into a cutting file? I don’t know – but I know it is something I will hope to play with over the weekend and maybe by Monday I will have found a solution!
This is the best I can do with my current brain fog from Covid. Still am not totally enjoying my coffee and when I do I will know my taste and smell have fully come back. I read it could take a YEAR. Ugh.
This colour combo is one of my all time faves. So rich, so deep, so…regal! Add in gold and it is a winner every time.
I began with a selection of colours and a butt-ugly piece of scrapbooking paper, one that was not quite 12×12. The reverse was a nice two-tone turquoise that I must have used on a layout sometime.
I know the steps aren’t super informative but they might help if I explain. I love the PM Artist Studio stencils because they always give you the surrounds and even the bits from inside as well. I like the edges for helping create a border, even if future layers obliterate it, mostly. And a layer of a much lighter colour always lifts things when I let them get a bit too dark.
From there, I added in the teal, straight and lightened with white. Numbers, mark-making, and just lots and lots of layers.
Always something metallic at the end, and it has to be gold, doesn’t it? Wish I knew where I got the symbols for this stencil. I cut it AGES ago and can’t find it on my computer anywhere. No idea what it is called. I thought something like RUNES, but nope. Nuts.
I do want to add the SCAN of the final piece, because really, there is a world of difference between the PHOTO and the SCAN. Crikey.
The deep rich colour in the scan more than makes up for what you lose of the glimmer of the gold, catching the light. Love it a lot. It feels like…November! Maybe.
Happy WOYWW! My desk is not awful, as I have tidied up a bit from the making of my White On White colour challenge piece and moved on to make a bunch of cards from the 12 x 12 sheet.
I’ll walk thru the card tomorrow. I thought I would share the scan of the paper – I haven’t tried doing it before, but I wonder if I can print the scan and perhaps add some touches of gold to it then use THAT for making more cards. I really like it so I might give it a go.
What else? I was also working on a long piece of packaging paper, but with no real firm idea what I want to do with it. I feel like it’s best use, when done (and it’s not QUITE there yet) is for covering something. Maybe some boxes? Not sure. It has been draped over the paint cart for a few days while I worked on the W-on-W challenge, but now I need to finish it and decide what to do with it!!
It is def. my usual chaotic style.
The Cat. Her most favourite spot, other than on the cushion in my sewing room while he in on his computer, is at the top of the stairs. Like Yertle the Turtle, she is the ruler of all she surveys…or thinks she is anyway!
Photo? Not this week….
Happy WOYWW to all – we are putting up the tree this coming weekend…how about you?
I ytook the plunge, and added some of the gold to the titanium buff+white and some iridescent medium too, then pushed it thru a stencil for some dimension. I don’t get really any of the medium, and really not a LOT of the gold, but I still like it a lot.
The dimension makes the very very similar colour stand out on top of the base, so that worked out well. I mixed more gold into the same colour, and got a much more shimmery tone, but not full-on gold quite yet. I was holding that back for the last layer! Time for text of some kind, a small alpha-numeric stencil…
I had a smidge of that colour left so I dragged it across the surface with a palette knife
The trick of adding the gold TO the other colours stays true to the challenge but gave me a different shade to play with. A win!
Time for a pop of really bright white now, and as part of the challenge is to make a finished project with it (I am planning a set of Christmas cards – six or more if I can manage it) stars seems appropriate.
The light catches the gold nicely here so you can see how it shines. And that leaves the final layer, my favourite gold grid circles over the top. Woo hoo!
I love it and there is a lot of depth for such a limited range of colours! There is more difference IRL to the golds than you see in the photo. But this shot does a good job of capturing the all layers
Working from the bottom up:
Book papers
titanium+white schmear
Gesso wash
stencil with grey+white
pen work circles
gold+titanium+white dimensional circles
pale gold letters+numbers
palette knife schmear
bright white stars
bright gold grid circles
Now, I really have to think about the card design before I get anywhere near my trimmer! And I really need to scan this one cause I love it a LOT…
So another member of the art group I am on issued another challenge… using White and Shades of White. She says:
Colour combination: White and shades of white.
Allowed:
1. One additional metallic colour (gold, copper, silver etc).
2. You can use dark papers to pull the prints.
3. There must be an end use of at least one print (so cards, tags, decorations etc).
Tricky!
After mulling it over for a while, I decided I would begin with book papers. I like the idea of that rather than the dark paper background. I created an overlapping grid from a few different books, so different text, different colours, etc and tied it all together with a watered down Gesso wash.
I collected up a handful of whites and what I think are shades of white – titanium buff and a pale grey. I dithered about using other close to white shades, like a very pale blue or pink or very pale green or coral. I felt like keeping to neutrals was more in keeping with the challenge. Gold was my metallic, although generally, silver would likely be the “obvious” choice. I did add white to those shades to make them even paler.
I did a swipe of the titanium+white and then the grey+white thru a stencil
I was a little stymied as to the way forward, but I tried adding some paint pen circles thru a stencil.
It proved my point, which was that adding the bright white over the shades made it pop nicely. But where to go from here? It feels too early to add the gold, but I feel like I can mix the gold in with some of the other shades to alter it and give a different tone. So I might try that. And to be honest, I am kinda loving this as is – I mean it isn’t a finished piece, not yet, but it feels like it is going in the right direction!
After the catastrophe of the Navy + Red attempts (and no-one will convince me they were anything but fails, so don’t even try! Although try two was less awful than One was…) this is a huge relief. I don’t feel like I have to work hard to “bring it back” but I do need to be careful not to let this go off the rails!
I think I mentioned doing some colour challenges from a gel printing group I am part of. I have done a few and really enjoyed both the process and the results. But now…
The challenge was Red & Navy. Should have been simple, right? So many cases of those colours, not least the flags of BOTH my countries. But somehow it all went Pete Tong.
The first few layers were ok, ish. I was really bothered by that few slightly diagonal swipes. In a way I don’t think I really ever recovered from them LOL!
Can’t go wrong with letters or numbers, usually, and in this case, yeah, great added layer. But then, because it was an added bit of a challenge to use up, if possible, some bottles of very old Making Memories paints, I added in the colour that was closest to being finished. Lime Green!
There was no coming back from that!
I added in a few more layers, thinking each time it was going to help, but it just got worse and worse.
I cut the sheet up, added some bright green and some more stamping, and it just did not get any better
I wish I could show you some of the failed attempts to make them better, but they are all in the bin! Funny thing is, there were comments, when I shared the fails with that group, that said how much they liked it, and that I should walk away and come back and look at it with fresh eyes – all things I myself have said to people when they are weeping with despair over some bit of art (or knitting or whatever) and I am trying to help them feel better about it. And none of it DID help. It was a dog’s dinner from the jump.
On a more positive note, I grabbed another sheet of paper and on complete auto-pilot, I made a sheet that I like a lot and which will end up being another monthly journal cover. So not the worst day ever.
That sheet has a weird colour combo but I freaking love it. Now I just have to go back and make a Red & Navy one that I don’t hate, and maybe in the process try to analyze what the tipping point is. How does it go from ok, fine, kinda like it, to OMG I loathe every inch of this piece with every fiber of my being. And can you come back from that?
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scrappystickyinkymess 