Tag Archives: freebie

Holiday freebie for you – faux turquoise technique tutorial!

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I may not have time to give workshops right now (the next one will be in January), but I can still teach you a few things! Here’s a lesson freebie – a cool Faux-Turquoise technique.

While working on a commissioned assemblage, I realized how often I use the painted faux-turquoise finish that I developed several years ago. It works on almost all my mixed-media surfaces – clay, paper, cradle board, canvas.

Here’s your step-by-step tutorial on how I do this finish. Feel free to change it up and experiment with your own variations. There’s no secret here, just simple materials and techniques that give good results in an uncomplicated way. It’s super fun, too.

Step One: Assemble Materials

Rarely do I specify specific brands, but in this case, these three acrylic paints work best in combination of all the ones I’ve tried for this particular technique.

You will also need a wide-ish flat brush (about 1″), a graphite pencil, a terrycloth washrag or studio rag, a white colored pencil (optional), and something to paint on. For this demonstration, I chose  4×6″ piece of archival mat board. You’ll need a water container to clean your brush, too.

You don’t need a lot of complicated materials for this

Step Two: Make you mark

I often have my workshop participants open up to their work by doing some scribbling on the substrate – you can always gesso over it, but it keeps them from being intimidated by a white surface. If they don’t know what to scribble, I ask them to scribble what they had for breakfast! In the demo below, I just did some random markmaking with a graphite pencil. It added a bit of subtle texture to the surface, too.

Make the space yours by claiming it with markmaking

Step Three: Slap on the base coat

Paint right over those marks you made with a coat of Aqua Green acrylic, being generous. Use random strokes, x-strokes in every direction. You don’t want to leave thick texture, but yo do want some slightly raised areas.

A nice coat of aqua green painted randomly on the matboard

Step Four: More marks

Let this coat sit until it is sticky but not dry, then go back in with your graphite pencil and make more light marks on the surface.

Step Five: Lighten it up

Add some of the Matte White acrylic to the Aqua Green to make a paler tint of turquoise. Brush it randomly over about one-third of the surface. Play with the proportions.

Matte White with a bit of Aqua Green

Step Six: Press and Lift

While the lighter tint is still wet, Press your terrycloth rag straight down onto the surface to lift some of the lighter tint in areas. This leaves very stone-like patches of light and dark.

Press the cloth straight down, then lift.

Step Seven: Adding the Azo Gold

Take your bottle of Quinacridone Nickle Azo Gold and drop several blobs of paint on the surface. It will look very dark and slightly gross, but don’t worry – Quin Gold is extremely transparent and will make a lovely glaze in the next step.

Blobs of Quin Gold dropped on the surface

Step Eight: Blob-dabbing

Using the same terrycloth rag (which will never be the same again), dab the blobs firmly to spread them and create texture.

Dabbed-out blobs of Quin Gold

Step Nine: Light blending and marking

Continue to add light marks, and do a bit of blending with the rag, but use a light touch.

More scratches and marks

Step Ten: Finish with dry-brushing

To veil and push back all of the color variations and textures, dry-brush a final coat of aqua green over the surface. You can see here that the right half has been dry-brushed and the left half has not yet been brushed. If you build up this layer slowly, you can control what is revealed and what is concealed. “Dry-brushing” means just that – adding a little bit of paint to a dry brush and stroke it lightly over the surface. After this step, let the whole thing dry. And go wash your brush!

Final dry-brush coat

Step Eleven: Tah-Dah!

You can see in the close-up how the painted finished mimics the real stuff in texture and color. As I said, this surface is archival mat board, but you can try this technique on anything acrylic paint works with.

I can see it on a mirror frame, for example, with copper nailheads all around it, or perhaps covering the top of a wooden box. Or how about a turquoise ornament for a Christmas tree, Southwestern style?

Here are a couple more photos of the faux-turquoise mat board cut up into smaller sections, and also a small adornment with copper tape for a collage or pin.

collage adornment

Cut sections of faux-turquoise matboard for mixed media

I hope you enjoy this technique. If you try it, let me know how you use it!

And thanks, as always, for reading SHARDS!

 

 

 

Product review and freebie

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I’m always looking for new products that aren’t too gimmicky and have multiple uses – this Metallic Creative Medium seems to fit that description.

I ordered some of this CM Metallic from Imagine Crafts, thinking it would work well on my earthenware face shards. Here are some pics and comments:

Here's the Metallic Medium - kind of a creamy paste in a jar. It comes in bronze, copper, gold, and silver.

Here’s the Metallic Medium – kind of a creamy paste in a jar. It comes in bronze, copper, gold, and silver.

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First, I sprayed the fired earthenware faces with Walnut Ink, as usual, and wiped it off to emphasize depth and detail.

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I applied the medium with my finger to the clay surfaces, trying out all four colors. It is very transparent on the clay and I needed two coats. It also seals the surface – that may be a plus in some circumstances.

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Left to right – copper, gold and silver – very subtle on the clay. I added pigment and applied onto some stamped black paper – again, very transparent.

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Finally, I added acrylic paint and rubbed some Pearl-Ex into the surface while it was tacky – lotsa bling.

Verdict for using CM Metallic on earthenware – 6 out of 10. It’s a little too transparent for my purposes, although two or three coats work well.

Best quality – it dries super quickly, so you could stencil it on a surface and go over it with watercolor or (of course) walnut ink almost immediately.

I checked on Amazon and somebody was selling it for $18 a jar – EEK! But  JoAnn’s has it online for about $6, which makes me think they might have it in their store as well for that price.

This is kind of a cool project using the medium that would lend itself to lots of spring-off ideas – I like the notion of covering the blocks with vintage pages – and maybe vintage photos?

Creative Blocks

Click image for directions

Freebie time!! I have four extra jars of this medium, one in each color, that I’m happy to share with you SHARDS guys. Just leave a comment for me and the first four people can have a jar to play with.

The only catch is that you need to be in San Antonio to pick them up at the Studio, because I don’t want to box and mail them. Yeah, I know – chintzy. Sigh.

I may not be pretty, but I work!!

I may not be pretty, but I work!!

SPEAKING OF FREEBIES and such, and because we all help each other out, I have an artist friend who is in need of a cheap car. Really cheap, just reliable transportation of any kind or condition or color. If you’re getting rid of an old vehicle or can donate one, please email me and I’ll pass the info along to her. She can afford to pay $1000 toward getting some wheels, but that’s about it. Help!

Thanks, as always, and stay tuned for more Studio updates – in the meantime, go out and play!

 

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No-Fire Shard Faces – a how-to freebie

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So you can’t come to the workshop this afternoon? Darn! Well, never fear – here’s a how-to freebie on making your own shard faces and adornments at your own place of creative belonging. No kiln needed because this project uses air-dry clay, lightweight and inexpensive. I’m going to demo this process at the workshop this afternoon although we will be using actual earthenware clay today. But this is a fun option to try at home (yes, you can try this at home). Here are some how-to step-by-step photos. And if you click this link, you’ll get a printable one-page list of materials and directions. Happy molding! That sounds weird. Happy creating beautiful one-of-a-kind clay objects of delight!!