Monday, May 5, 2008

Sharing Some of My Weekend Studio

As I posted on Friday, I stopped by my local art shop to find they had a nice Spring Sale going on. I wanted to pick up a few things, so the sale was a bonus. Below is a quick photo of the items I purchased on Friday. I used some of these things this weekend and some I did not. Obviously you will be able to see some of these items later on. But do you see those three little bottles in the front? They are the main subject I want to talk about today.

This is an example of rice paper which has been saturated with acrylic ink (yellow, blue and purple). Now Elis Cooke, who writes the blog Into the Bylistic, works magic with metallic powders. When I spoke with her about that, she recommended I give PearlEx brand a try. I have taken her advice and those three little bottles are indeed PearlEx powdered pigments.
I placed a small bit of the pearl powder in a double layered square of cheese cloth and gathered up the corners. While I held the little package by the corners in my left hand, I used my right hand to tap the left hand which was holding the powder package over the paper with saturated with wet ink. Then I hung it up to let it dry. The ink really absorbs into the rice paper, so make sure you have something under it to also absorb the ink. Do you hear an opportunity here?
Here I tried to get a close up shot for you looking across the paper.

But my favorite way to use this powder was to mix it with the acrylic ink.
This is the same blue and purple ink which I poured separately into little cups and added the pearl powder. Then I poured this over the rice paper! Of course the ink melded together and the powder had a mind of it's own and came together in the center of the ink images and melded itself! This is really appealing to me.

So I tested a lot of colors and several methods using these same mediums. You will get to see them, too. So, what do you think I am considering doing with these pieces?

I did not only work with these this weekend.
I worked on a painting which has been on my easel, I started another canvas and am preparing a backing for one of the weavings I have been working on. So it was a very successful weekend in the studio. I worked and worked until I just didn't have any more space in there for things to dry!

Did you have a creative weekend?

Have a Wonderful Day!

12 comments:

Daphne Enns said...

That is a really appealing process. I'm going to have to go shopping for metallic powder and more acrylic inks...

Are you going to do a weave with this?

Andrea and Kim said...

It is very appealing and it is like watching a movie when you do it...even watching it dry is interesting! LOL

Oh, a weave would be interesting, I think! :)

Thanks Daphne!

Paula In Pinetop said...

Acrylic inks. I don't have any of those. I wonder if acrylic paints would work????? Sprinkle quick before they dry too much..??????

~Babs said...

Really love those brilliant colors in the first photo, Kim.
Looks like very interesting stuff,,,,,experiments are so fun,
Thanks for sharing yours!
I only worked on one small piece this weekend,,,,(also an experiment),,,,I'm sure it will show up on my blog at some point, though I'm not completely sure that it's finished.
Big thumbs up on getting in lots of studio time!

Anonymous said...

Fun! New supplies to try.

sukipoet said...

Good thing I'm not a psychologist or I might try to interpret these ink blots. I LOVE PearlEx metalic powders. I have three golds, silver, bronze and antique bronze and copper and antique copper. I use them often just mixing them with matte medium or acrylics. I have never tried doing it with inks though. Just be careful about breathing in the powder.

I really like your evocative experiments here. They might be turned into just about anything. When I make sheets like this, using tissue paper, I find endless uses for them often tearing them up into smaller pieces.

Andrea and Kim said...

Hi Paula,

Sure, you can use them with acrylics...you can use them with just about anything. I just wanted to try them with the ink.

Andrea and Kim said...

Oh Boys Babs! I sure had fun!

Yeah, you don't see me use yellow much...I wanted to try the powder on it, but you can't see it as well. I actually played with the bottom half of that bit today...it was fun. I will probably show you a bit of the wip tomorrow!

Yellow...still not much of my color, but it does make other colors come alive sometimes.

I can't wait to see what you have been up to! :)

Andrea and Kim said...

Chewy...

you know me, I love to play!

Andrea and Kim said...

Hi Suki!

Yes, these look really wonderful on tissue paper...I did a bit of that too. I sometimes use the tissue paper as a blotter of sorts with these kinds of things...or to kind of wipe off a brush or something...then they often work great as wrapping for a package.

I just might have to tear these up a bit...with the ink soaking through the paper it is so cool to tear it...the edges look wonderful.

Those powders sound like fun too. I purchased 2 others, but will play with them later.

Thanks for the reminder about the powder flying...I did wear a mask! A very good reminder, though...thank you.

Elis Cooke said...

Hi Kim
You got some great effects! and most importantly it sounds like you had fun! Great idea to use the cheesecloth to offset the clumping and make it more like sprinkling. The other thing I am wondering might be trying to sprinkle with an old salt shaker? namaste Elis.

Andrea and Kim said...

Thanks Elis! I really loved doing these a lot. I just saw the cheesecloth there and thought why not...the old salt shaker also might do it depending on the size of the holes... If that didn't work, you could place the cheesecloth over the top of the shaker and go from there, too...or any container.

Thanks for the heads up on this product, Elis and the application help, too.