These two pages were indeed different colors of gesso to start with, they reminded me of a naughty rhyme that goes: one black one one white one and one with a bit of ... on :) (note to Mum: if you are reading this, I dare you not to finish the rhyme in your head :D) I still get to paint one of them over again :)
I am starting to understand abstract and intuition artists. They seem to be the ones that start with the intention of having fun over all else! I believe I am becoming one of them, haven't decided which type yet. Then again, who wants to label who here?!
After enjoying the previous page so much, with the spray pens and the fact that the white acrylic paint I use lets the color bleed threw, I decided to continue the fun and use them again. You'll see me getting out my first ever homemade stencils and going a bit crazy :)
I tried to use acrylic paint on the stencils to get a nice effect, but it wasn't working out, so I opted to using the transfer paper prints I had made with the same stencils I'm using here. This was when I was testing how acrylic paint will react on transfer paper, glad I kept those!
Once those pieces of transfer paper were glued down, it was time to decide what was going to happen from here! I had no idea. Since I was working with the intention of playing, I decided to just play with writing text right in the middle of the page, boy did that feel good!!!!! Like breaking some unmentioned rules... talking about unmentionables.... let's leave it there for now :)
Since I wanted to use that diamond shape stencil I had made, I thought why not go back to really being a child and using the coloring pens that our art teachers at school made us believe that we could make a Picasso with! Lier lier pants on fire !!! None of them ever told us the tricks to use those color pens, but now I know they work very well with zentangles and if you want to color crazy mixed media pieces with the intention of discovering how they'll react with the rest :) Knowing that there is always a risk that they will just smudge all over the place and leave you stairing at a new challenge (lol).Anyway, I still got to use my white acrylic paint to doodle over the stenciled area and let the color bleed threw the doodles :) I liked that effect.
On hindsight, I believe that the page could have still looked good, if not better, if I had stenciled around the words and the edges instead of over the whole page... Ah well, lessons learned! I wonder when I'll ever finally get the lesson of "less is more" !!!!
Here is the full spread:
Here is the actual creative process:
Supplies: (in order of appearance)
- recycled transfer paper (to hold the spread)
- wood glue
- Gesso
- Acrylic paint
- Stencils (homemade)
- Spray pens
- Permanent marker (for the text)
- Acrylic varnish to protect the page (matt/gel medium)
