Dancing Moonbeams

The challenge at Take A Word this week is 'Moon'.  I've done a piece in my Art Journal and have used it to test and experiment with a new product and some new techniques!

By the light of the dark grey moon :)

 This is a single page from my journal.  I began by spraying the top two thirds of the page with water followed by Rangers colour wash in Stream.  I left it a minute, blotted it with towel and repeated the exercise to ensure all the page was covered.
The bottom third of the page was sprayed with Dylusions in London Blue and then painted with Golden paints Phthalo Blue with a little red brought in closer to the bottom of the page.
The stylised stars are stamped with Memento Ink in Moonlight white and the sea/lake has waves stamped in Archival Ink French Ultramarine.  The foliage at the front is a Hero Arts stamp using StayzOn Black.
Land to the right is painted in various tones of green from Golden Paints.
Then came the moon!.......

Some of you may know that I'm working with various techniques at the moment and this is one I learnt from Andy Skinner.  I couldn't help but notice how much like the craters of the moon it looks, so I scanned my box lid and added some shaping in Photoshop then printed it on Silver Metallic Foil by Personnel Impressions.  In real life it's really shiny.
To finish off, I masked some of the page with paper towels and sprayed from the moon to the water with Perfect Pearls in water.  I sprayed heavily and blotted the sky portion to remove some of the colour wash.  I left the Pearl Spray on the water to hint at reflection.

Thanks for looking and commenting, I really do appreciate it.

Let's get industrial

At Sunday Postcard Art today they have an open theme, which means I have the opportunity to play with my Christmas gifts, even though there is no relevance to the season.

Welcome to my industrial playing

Oh hello rust!

For Christmas this year I got some amazing stamps and embossing folders, many of which relate to grunge, industrial and steampunk.  Although one of the stamp sets randomly is Circus - a theme I don't care for too much.
I was playing around with a rust technique I found on the net and I love it.

It isn't my technique so I won't describe the process but instead I will recommend Andy Skinner, who is a genius :)

Rainbow Trout

Over the last week or so I have been playing with a negative space technique and have used it on this piece.  What it means is that I didn't paint the fish, I painted the space between the fish.  If that makes any sense.

The fish I didn't paint!

This is an A5 piece painted on high quality card stock.  I covered the entire substrate with various colours of translucent Golden Fluid paints.  I chose bright colours and, because the paints are translucent, they show the colour underneath when you paint over them.  (let them dry before you paint over)

As you can see below, it was really an exercise in covering the paper without creating muddy colours

Once it was dry I used a French handwriting stamp across the whole of the page in Archival French Ultramarine blue.  Using a pencil to draw the outline of the fish, I then outlined again in white paint before applying lots of Gesso to fill in the space between the fish.  I built up lots of texture but it's hard to see from the photo's.  In real life the white seems to have the texture of water swirling around the fish.

I then outlined the fish with a black permanent marker and applied some white dots using the end of my paintbrush.  

Most of my art is bound into books, but I really like this one so I framed it for a while. 

Credit to Andy Skinner for a video that got me playing with this technique.