Finding inspiration: Kandinsky (part 2)

Hi there polkadot!

I’ve been off the radar for some time now.  I have spent some time in the hospital, no biggie, but I’m glad to be with you again and show you things I’ve made whilst recovering.

I left my Kandisky inspired page with several layers of acrylic paint and a raw drawing of geometric shapes. A thought just popped into my mind… Whenever I make a piece, be it in art journaling, or in mixed media scrapbooking: I always get this creepy feeling between adding the layers of color and finetuning with lines and black/white: “THIS is going NOWHERE! FAST”.  I think it’s like the well known “ugly stage”.  Everyone has it, let me give you some advice for surviving this stage: put on your optimistic rainbow colored hat and sing: “Just keep swimming, swimming, swimming”

For all you Dory lovers:

I pulled out my gelato’s. I have the Faber Castell kind, but also Creall Silky’s.  Basically the same thing, but marketed for kids so less expensive 😉  (for my Belgian readers: I bought mine at Banier)

When you use two shades of the same color you can create some depth and movement.  But that’s not news for you is it 😀

After that step, I had color, but still not enough depth and movement to my taste.  I hadn’t taken the same path as our teacher in LoveArtHappyLife, Andrea Gomoll… And somehow I think that doing the background in watercolors would make the piece more light and moving.  But we will keep adding up to finish the page we started… Right?  Right!

The thing you need to keep in mind with mixed media…  All the ingredients you mix, have their own personality.  And just like with your friends, some go together but not all of them. Some personalities are great fun when you meet up for a toe to toe, but not so much when you mix them with other friends. It’s like putting together a table chart for a good diner party, really. Gelato’s, Silky’s, Neocolor I and II are really creamy and great fun to work with, but they do NOT play well with markers on top of them.  I read this good tip op the Facebook group of our course: you can take out the tip of your paintmarker (Molotow, Posca…) with tweezers and rinse them out immediately when you have used them over a greasy medium like the watersoluble crayons.  But to be honest, I prefer prevention over salvation. So I’ve put a coat of clear gesso over my Gelli Plate® and pressed it over my page on the right to seal the crayon.  It didn’t go on as clear as I hoped.  You can see a lot of texture.  I didn’t dare to go over it with a paintbrush (kinda beats the idea of putting on a coat with the gelli doenst’ it).  So I went with it.

I’m not even sure the camera picks it up…

When the gesso was dry, I stamped a few checkered pieces with archival ink. If you want to start a collection on Mixed Media background stamps, Prima is the company you want to look into.  They have sets of little stamps with every release, for a really good price.  They are clear stamps, so not -or less- suitable for stamping with paint.

Then I poured out my collection of pens on the table.  Man, I should really write an article about that too 😀 When you are in Wanderlust too: the supply video on markers didn’t have one item in it that I don’t know, or don’t own.  I’m terrible, I admit. I had fun adding little details.  I used serval kinds of nibs, different sizes and different types of ink.  The fatest lines where made with Faber Castell Pitt pens.  They have India Ink in them, you just cannot beat the depth of that black imho.

all finished!

This is what my first Kandisky inspired piece looks like.  It’s far from what the original looks like.  But I still am happy I made it, and didn’t copy the original.

I hope you enjoyed my lengthy proces. I’ll talk to you soon about my second piece.