Tutorial: Transparent Acrylic Skins

 (journal spread with transparent acrylic skins, white on the left and black on the top right)

A few months ago, I saw this brilliant video by Jane Davies, in which she demonstrated a technique for creating transparent acrylic skins. Go watch it, I'll wait.

Genius, right? But naturally, I had to change things up, modify a few steps, and generally make the technique work better for me in my studio. It's those tweaks that I'll be demo'ing in this blog post.

For those of you who are unable to watch the video, an acrylic skin is a thin film of acrylic paint that is created on a non-stick surface, allowed to dry fully, and then peeled off as one large piece and used in collage work. Before Jane's video (and to be fair, she told me that she learned the technique from another artist, Patty Brady), it had never occurred to me to make an acrylic skin with a transparent medium such as pouring medium, acrylic glazing liquid, clear tar gel, or fluid gloss medium ... mine had always been made just using opaque paints. 

So, I'll explain what all of this means as we go along.

What You'll Need:

~ A soft-sided squeeze bottle with a narrow tip, one for each color of paint you want to use.
~ Acrylic paint. Craft paint works perfectly well for this, but use whatever you have on hand. Heavy-body paints will need some thinning and you can use any of the mediums I listed above to accomplish this.
~ Full-sheet plastic pocket protectors.
~ An X-Acto or craft knife and small cutting mat.
~ Any one (or a combination of) the clear fluid mediums listed above (pouring medium, acrylic glazing liquid, clear tar gel, or fluid gloss medium)
~ A little bit of time and a lot of patience.

What You'll Do:

~ First, open up your pocket protector. Protectors are already open at the top, so using your X-Acto on top of your cutting mat, make a slit down the leading (right side) edge and across the bottom of the protector. Leave the left side of the protector- the one with the holes that allow you to put it into a 3-ring binder- alone!

~ Fold open your pocket protector in front of you- you're going to be working on the right side of the inside of the protector.

~ Prepare your squeeze bottles by squeezing your paint colors into them.

~You won't need much, so don't go crazy filling the bottle unless you think you'll have a need for it in the future! 

~ Now comes the fun part- mark-making! This is where you can totally personalize your acrylic skin. Ms. Davies uses simple and lovely scribbles, but me being me, I have to use Stacked Journaling, of course! However, you can do whatever you choose, from sketching with the paint to writing out your favorite passages, quotes, or words. Because the skin will be transparent, you'll be able to use either side of it, which means you won't have to worry about writing backwards in order for the writing to read properly on your finished work- just write as you normally would! Using the squeeze bottle filled with paint as if it was a pencil or other writing instrument, fill one side of the inside of the pocket protector with writing, scribbles, Stacked Journaling, or sketches. Be sure to leave the other side empty of paint.

~ Now is where your patience comes in. Let the paint dry! Because it's acrylic, it could dry very quickly, but if you used it fairly thickly, it will take longer. Twenty-four hours is usually sufficient.

~ Once the paint has dried, it's time to apply the fluid medium of your choice. In my example shown here, I used clear fluid gloss. It will go on cloudy, but dry perfectly transparent and glossy, with a lovely flexibility that will make it ideal for collaging. Mix the medium very carefully by holding it horizontally and rolling it slowly in your hand. Never shake a transparent fluid medium unless you have several hours available to let it sit and settle again, because shaking it will cause bubbles to form and they can be stubborn to pop!

~ Start your pour. This technique likes a lot of medium, so don't be skimpy with it. Squeeze out enough medium to cover all of the painted marks you made on your protector.

~ Most fluid mediums are self-leveling, but you may still get bare areas without any medium on them. You can use a palette knife, old credit card, or even the edge of a clean sheet of paper to fill them in by moving the wet medium around.

~ Your sheet protector should now look like this:

~ Now is a good time to look closely and see if you have any air bubbles. If you do and you leave them, they may level out as the medium dries, but it's more likely that they'll remain. Use a needle or needle tool to gently pop them.

~ Once again, your patience will be tried, because now you really need to wait until the medium dries. It usually only takes about 24 hours, but it may take longer depending on which medium you use, how thickly you squeezed it on, and how warm and humid your space is. Set it aside on a level surface, on piece of parchment paper or other non-stick sheet (in case any of the medium flows off the edge of the protector) and leave it alone! You will know when it's dried because it will have clarified completely (if there's any milkiness in its appearance, it isn't ready yet) and it will be smooth to the touch with no tacky areas. If you have difficulty picking it up to place it on parchment paper, you can slide your cutting mat or other flat, firm surface under the protector and transfer it to a piece of parchment for drying.

~ Once the medium is dried fully, you can use it at any time! Use a small piece, or the whole sheet, if you like. I like to cut small pieces or strips out of the whole sheet and use them in my collage work. I peel up just as much as I want to cut off...

... and then using regular scissors (don't use your fabric scissors for this!) I cut off a piece.

(Here, I cut a long strip off the end for use in a journal spread I'm working on.)

~ The beauty of creating these skins on the inside of the pocket protector is that when you've cut off the amount you want to use, you can close the protector over the remaining skin...

... and store the whole thing away in a 3-ring binder.

How cool is that? The skin won't dry out and become brittle over time because it's protected by being sandwiched in the protector and you can easily stash away any unused portions for later use!

How To Use: 

~ Because the skin is made of artist's acrylics, it works beautifully with glues and gel mediums. To adhere a piece onto a collage, painting, or journal page, spread a thin layer of any kind of acrylic medium- even paint!- onto your substrate (here, I used matte medium)...

... press the skin onto the glue/medium and wipe away any excess medium with a baby wipe...

... and allow it to dry. You may notice that the glue or medium you've used under the skin looks cloudy, but if you've used a transparent medium it will clarify as it dries and cures.

Tips and Suggestions

~ You don't have to make scribbles or letters, you can create geometric shapes, leaf shapes, trees, etc. Let your imagination flow!

~ You don't have to use a squeezie bottle. Try a paint brush or texture tools, instead!

~ You don't have to use just one color per skin. Imagine a rainbow of colors, mix and match to your hearts' content.

~ If you don't like something you've sketched onto your pocket protector, take a damp baby wipe and clean it away.

I hope you enjoyed this tutorial; I'll see you next week, when I hope to have a new painting to show you. In the meantime, create. Just create!

Chop!

Nothing earth-shattering today, just a quick note about finding a little bravery when re-imagining your work.

Say a piece isn't working. Like, for instance, this one from yesterday's blog post.

Say you're ready to throw in the towel, wad it up and put it in the recycle bin, or stuff it away on a shelf so you never have to look at it again.

Rather than give up, what might you do, instead? Well, you could Gesso over it and start again. Or you could paint large, opaque blocks of color over it and then try to bring more detail into it with imagery. Or you could collage all over it. I've done all of those things, and more, and I'm occasionally asked where I find the courage to destroy something I've made in order to remake it. My answer is always the same: What do I have to lose? If something isn't working for me, putting it away on a shelf isn't going to make it work better. So why not try something else?

Like cutting it up into little pieces.

Little 2-inch pieces of delicious color, movement, and composition. Little 2-inch treasures that can then be pieced back together, mosaic-style, onto a cradled gessobord.

Oh, yes, I did! And you can, too.

Re-imagine creatively!

Paint, Paper, Books!

I'm a big fan of the band Queen. One of the reasons I love their music so much is a technique they employed, particularly in their earlier work, called, "overdubbing." Overdubbing meant layering track after track after track of vocals and music one on top of the other to create a large, complex, richly textured sound. 

That's what I do when I paint, or try to. So this week, it's back to the basics- me, my table, my watercolor paper, and my paints.

I love laying thick layers of paint down onto water color paper. There's something very appealing and zen-like to me in the way the paper both absorbs and resists the paint. Being made to accept very wet pigments, it's thick and sturdy. It causes heavy body paint to stutter and skip across the surface, creating fascinating, serendipitous marks. But because it's made of cotton fibers, it's forced to accept the paint and meld with it, becoming both an opponent and a willing partner in the making of art.

This piece, on 18"x24" water color paper, seemed to accept the paint well, inviting a pleasing composition almost instantly.

I limited myself to just a few colors this week, which yielded a short series of completed art, some scrap papers, and a double-page spread in one of my art journals. I love working this way, with a limited palette but a variety of substrates. It's always interesting to see how the same colors can produce very different results.

This piece, for instance, another 18"x24" sheet of watercolor paper, has been resisting me- it can't seem to settle on a pleasing composition, no matter how many times I work back into it with fresh paint.

It may or may not get its wish to remain chaotic and weirdly cartooney- I still haven't decided if I'm ready to just let it go and move on. If I've learned anything, it's that paint can fix just about any poor composition. But I've also learned that some work- particularly experimental stuff like this- isn't worth finishing, and that putting it aside and accepting it for what is makes more sense.

Anyway, while I was working these two large pieces, I was also painting into two other substrates: a simple piece of white copy paper, and a large, blank board book.

The copy paper had more moderate aspirations, and I like it for its simplicity.

The book spread was much more aggressive and bold.

I used collage material on it before applying the layers of paint. I like its messiness.

All this painting yielded some lovely scrap deli paper, too- sheets of 18"x18" tissue-thin papers that were used to blot up excess paint.

These will make lovely collage material.

Also this week, as I am right now big into following through on what I say I'm going to do, I took last weeks' painted and gel plate-printed papers and stitched them into a small journal.

I used a simple binding, since this isn't meant to become anything but a sketch book and acceptor of more cast-off paint, and I left some of the pages blank for future experiments.

The lessons I'm learning this year are this: art is hard; it can and will kick your ass. It will occasionally whisper to you that it's time to give up and move onto other things. It will mock you and your will to create. It will vanish from your grasp, sometimes for years at a time. And it will exhaust you with its demands.

But you're the one in charge. Art doesn't come to those who are forever divinely inspired and motivated. It isn't something that's given only to a precious few. It comes to those who work at it every day, who push back at it when it whines and begs for a day on the couch binge-watching Netflix. You don't have to be particularly talented or special. You just have to be a badass and show it your tough love.

Create. I don't care how you do it, just do it.

Promise To Myself

I promised myself several things for 2014, and I'm following through, so far. It pleases me. Working every day- check! Blogging more frequently- check! Staying focused- check!

And so, inspired by the left-hand page in the lost-and-then-found art journal I told you about last week...

... I set to work trying to evoke that same composition (intentionally almost Notan-like) and movement.

I feel like I mostly succeeded on this 18" x 24" cradled panel, though I'm pretty sure the piece isn't finished, yet. I started with a background of paint and, as with the original page in my journal, created the two design elements with painted paper.

Now, lemme tell you about that amazing paper. Come closer, because if you're as obsessive about paper as I am, you're going to want to hear every word of what I say. I was introduced to this stuff through a former teacher, Pat Thomas, from whom I took an incredible paper marbling class a few years ago. I believe it was on her Facebook page where she mentioned having just purchased more "waterproof paper". Yupo? I wondered. No, something else, something different...something called Texoprint. I immediately scrambled over to Hollander's (the Mecca of paper products and bookbinding supplies and classes) and ordered twenty sheets.

Now, I always get excited when I order more art supplies, but that excitement was nothing compared with how anxious and restless I felt until the precious pages of this miracle "waterproof" paper arrived, wrapped around a sturdy cardboard tube. I immediately set out to determine what this paper could do and what it couldn't do, and I'm happy to report that it's really lovely stuff.

You can't tear it, but it cuts easily. It's waterproof, but it accepts all manner of water media beautifully and without shedding any color once it's dried on the surface. I haven't tried it, but I can imagine that even with many layers of acrylic paint on the surface, it would still stitch like butter. It's incredibly lightweight, but doesn't crinkle, fold or cockle even when soaking wet, and can it collage? Oh yeah, baby, it collages like a dream come true, always lying down perfectly flat on your substrate without wrinkling or tearing; squeegeeing air bubbles out is a breeze. Truly, I've never used a collage paper that laid so flat and smooth that it looked like it was part of the substrate!

So, um, yeah. I like it. You might, too.

Also this week, I've been playing with my large gelli plate, making papers for a future stitched book using a technique I've altered from one originally posted by the fabulous Ms. Joan Bess, over on the Gelli site.

I love the hugeness of one of their newest additions to the family, the 12" x 14" gel plate. It allows me to use my usual deli and copy paper sizes and get a "bleed" print, one that goes all the way to the edge of the paper.

This will most likely be the cover of the new book...

And these will be some of the signatures...

Let me tell you quickly about the last two photos above, because they're created using a bastardized version of a technique Ms. Joan developed a while back for printing on packing tape. In this technique video, Joan demonstrates how she applies many layers of paint to the gel plate, allowing each layer to dry in between, and then lifts all the layers off at once with packing tape.

I altered the technique slightly by using paper to lift the print, rather than packing tape. After I've applied all my layers of paint and let each of them dry, I slather the whole plate in textile paint, which has a gel-like consistency and tends to stay wet a little longer than most acrylic paints. I then let the textile paint sit on the plate for a minute or two, softening up the dried layers of paint beneath it. Then I burnish paper (in this case, 140# hot press water color paper) onto the gel plate, allow the paper to sit for another couple of minutes to really absorb all the paint, and then finally, I pull my print. Usually, this technique is a true one-off, because all the paint transfers to the paper and there's nothing left on the plate to take a ghost print. But with the two prints above, I misjudged how wet I had gotten the textile paint. You'd think, by looking at the two prints side by side, that the almost-completely yellow print was the ghost print- or the print that was taken last- but it's not!

After spending time burnishing the paper to the gel plate with a burnishing tool, and letting the paper sit and soak up all the paint, I pulled by print and was kind of amazed that almost none of the dried paint layers came up! I immediately slapped down another sheet of paper, burnished, waited, burnished, waited, said a little prayer to the gelli gods, and pulled my print. Fortunately, the second attempt at the plate had the desired effect, and pulled all the dried paint layers up.

Anyway, while you're over at the gelli site checking out Ms. Joan's work, please take a minute to watch her newest video. This is, in my humble opinion, is the best of the batch, and demonstrates layering color in a painterly fashion. Go. Watch!

Until next time, create with fun!

A New Year

I feel like I've been away from "my art" forever, even though I really haven't been. I know it's just a reaction to having moved and to living now with being the caretaker of my father, but it feels like my work has been so distant from my soul for so long. Anyone who has stuck with this blog over the last two years, shoddy and neglected as it is, will know this, so I won't belabor the point yet again.

However, I will- again! - rededicated myself to working every day, to blogging often, to learning new concepts, to taking a workshop that will immerse me in the energy and inspiration of other artists, and to coming back into the creative life and making myself whole again. I suppose you could call this my New Years' resolution, though I am loathe to think of it in those terms (who ever manages to follow through on those things, anyway??) I've done this before over the last two years, and it feels like I've failed, but dammit, I'm going to keep trying until it sticks!

My husband and I took the longest December staycation we've ever taken before, in 2013... twenty-four days! During that time, I didn't worry or fuss about much, and I just played in the studio with an old passion of mine, long neglected: bookbinding. It's been fun and informative and while I had promised myself that I would only play with it until the end of the year and then get on with more "serious" work, I've decided to continue to do it in conjunction with painting and fiber work. It's just been too much fun to abandon!

The first task I took on was to teach myself the copic stitch. I did a lot of online reading and then watched some excellent videos over and over again. This video by Sea Lemon was particularly helpful.

I created a new sketchbook for myself using a combination of water color paper and bristol smooth velum. The hard covers started out as the front and back of a piece of batiked paper I made many years ago. Not bad for a first effort!

The next journal I created was made from some beautiful handmade water color paper I found in the art store (note the deckled edges). This book, which I stitched very simply down the middle as one "signature", contains a mini book inside, as wall as many fold out pages. This was a lot of fun to make and has been enjoyable to work in, as well, as it lays flat when folded out.

This next piece is just for fun. Looking for ephemera one day to collage with, I wound up on ebay. A quick search for "encyclopedia" and "sheet music" netted me a beautiful, enormous bound encyclopedia with thousands of tissue weight pages...

... and a large box of hundreds of yellowed and crumbling pieces of sheet music, many of them personally annotated in pencil and pen by their previous owner....

The resulting book wishes only to serve as a memorial for these old printed pages, to salute the written word and the passage of time. It won't be used as a sketchbook in the future.

And a wonderful thing happened while my husband was digging out Christmas decorations... he finally found all of my old art journals that I thought had been long gone in the move!! One in particular that had always been my favorite held a treasure trove of memories and beautiful layouts, as well as inspiration for new work.

After thumbing through this journal, which is now going on four years old, I wonder why I ever stopped doing this!

One spread in particular caught my eye... it was of a few sketches I had done as ideas for how I might use Stacked Journaling.

The idea behind these sketches was to use negative space to express myself with SJ. I was immediately inspired and broke out a small Gessobord to start experimenting.

Using clear contact paper, I covered the surface of the gessobord (yes, it really is spelled that way!) and then cut large shapes into the contact paper. I peeled the contact paper away from the shapes, leaving me with negative space. Then I used a sharpie to fill it in with tightly composed Stacked Journaling. I have no idea if this one is finished or not, and since it was just a first experimentation with this idea, it may remain as is forever.

Finally, I want to show you a piece that was done during a few very dark days back in November. I've been struggling with my father and his assisted living facility over hygiene issues (trust me, you don't want to know more!) and my frustration and anger finally boiled over. I took it out on this large canvas.

(This Is My Box (There Are Many Like It, But This One Is Mine), pencil on stretched canvas, 18" x 24")

Feeling extremely boxed in at the time, I used a blank stretched canvas to express my emotions with layer after of layer of penciled Stacked Journaling inside a crude box shape. Because my desire is to one day leave that box, I used water soluble graphite pencils, which I then sprayed with water to force the Journaling to melt out of the boarders of the box. 

I will continue to work, continue to feel, and continue to push myself. This is my promise to myself.

Happy New Year!