Mushrooms!

Hello Everyone,

First just a quick reminder about our up and coming Get Together/Book Swap Meeting on Saturday, December 7th at The Chancery in Wauwatosa, from 10:30 - Noon.  It should be a lot of fun.

Here's the link to The Chancery's website:  www.thechancery.com



I  thought I would also share one of my image making processes for a new book I'm creating on cartoonish mushrooms.

Part of the idea for this process came from a post on Pinterest about negative painting.  (I have put a tutorial on the Binders Guild Pinterest page.)

This is the finished page.

I started by creating a monotype with acrylic paint.  You will need to work very quickly, so it helps to set up everything in advance, a plastic sheet, several containers and brushes, lots of already pre-cut paper,  (I am using a medium weight (140lb) Strathmore Drawing Paper.) and a space to put the finished prints so they can dry.  Then you can start mixing your paints.

I used acrylic paint that was thinned to almost a water or ink consistency.

Then using my handy plastic sheet, I painted several color across the surface.

Working very quickly, I put my paper on top of the paint and just using my hand applied gentle pressure to the back of the paper.

The more paint you apply and the faster you will determine the intensity of the final product.  Since I knew these were to be for background texture,  I didn't want them too dark all over.  

Here's some others I did that day -

It does help if you have your cut and ready to go.  The process goes really fast, and it's fun to play around with strokes and colors to see what kind of effects you can create. 

After the print dries you are ready to move on to the next phase.  With pencil, you'll want to draw your image on the print.

Then you will want to move on to the negative painting.  Using glazing medium and liquid acrylic paint-

You'll want to create a thin glaze with the medium and the paint.   Then paint over all the parts except those that will show only the background printing.  (For me, I decided to leave only the circles inside the front mushroom as the background.)

I let that dry and added a second and third coat of glaze.  Once again, you have to decide what will be covered with glaze.  The glaze dulls the texture and value.

After the glazes had dried, I used some Caran D'ache water soluable crayons to add in some highlights and push the color further.  After that dried I added some definition and details with black ink.

The final step was to add just a bit of color with acrylic paint.

I'm doing several different kinds of mushrooms with the same technique.  I will bring them to the meeting in January.  In the meantime, I'm looking forward to our book swap.

See everyone there!


Quote of the Week:  "I couldn't wait for success, so I went ahead without it." - Jonathan Winters