2LO Texture-making Class : India Ink on Yupo

 

Continuing with 2 Lil Owls'  Texture-making class, this lesson focused on India Ink on Yupo Paper.

These black textures are what Kim Klassen calls Magic Textures, as you can use the screen blend mode in PhotoShop or PS Elements to layer these into a photograph.  Truly--it doesn't come out black and inky!  Here's an example.

Even the brayer unloading pages in my Waste-Not/Want-Not book came out looking kind of cool!  See below ...

On the  final set (below), I tried the India Ink and brayer technique on the photo paper I had.  It seemed to work much better than than the Alcohol inks did on that paper.  I have a stack of it for a photo printer that is long gone.  (This paper actually never worked well in that little printer, either.)  I think they look better if you don't work this photo paper too much -- I just need to remember that if I use it again.  The over-worked ones look a little duller in the middle.

I actually did these a few weeks ago, but --you know how it is when you make something new -- It comes from you, it's yours, but it still looks foreign--NOT yours.  Even though it is.  I had to let these sit a while so I could get used to them.  To claim them as my own. 

I suspect I'll be playing more with this method -- as soon as I get more Yupo paper. ;-)

2LO Texture-Making Class : High Flow Acrylics

 These have so much depth and richness in person.   

Thanks to so many layers with the inks.

Continuing with the lessons in Denise Love's online Texture-making Class.
This lesson used High Flow Acrylics on Yupo paper. 

  

The spring green version.

Here I was mixing the warm colors.  

Yellows and reds, and it all came out looking orange.   HOT!

 This is the first one I did, just playing with the brayer, pushing the ink around. 
Only 1 color ink on this one.

I love the results, but each one took more than 20 minutes to work up.  That's why I only made 3 textures in this session -- and I was running out of ways to mix the colors.  Perhaps I'll have to come up with some color mixing recipes I can sit down with -- but still welcome the serendipity effect.  

I finally quit when then brayer started lifting too much off with each pass.

I'd like to do more with this technique, but I need to get more Yupo.  

Not quite sure why it isn't available locally.

2LO Texture-Making Class : Gelatin Plate MonoPrints

 

Continuing with 2 Lil' Owls online texture-making class, this time with mono prints off of a gelatin (Gelli) plate.    I actually made my own gelatine plate with glycerine and good ol' Knox gelatin.  Simple and affordable ingredients.  The brand name Gelli plate is a little pricey--I didn't want to invest $30 only to use it once.  And the gelatine-only plates are a bit too delicate and not long-lasting enough--and I don't want it to take up space in the fridge.  With the DIY model, it's a smaller investment, long-lasting--and I think it works just as well.

 Gelli Printing with Found Objects video 

There are also a multitude of Gelli printing tutorials on Pinterest to explore.  So many possibilities!

[Idaho Beauty--I would recommend you give this a try.  The gelatine plate has a lot more "give" than glass or other hard printing surfaces, and it's amazing how the paint is lifted off the pad with the print paper. ] 

All told, I pulled about 25 8-1/2 x 11 inch prints that day.   I won't bore you with all of them, just a few of my favorites.  Enjoy!  ;-)

Here are the results of my gelatine plate Play Date :

This was the first one I pulled off the plate.    

Good enough to keep going to try more ... 

After that I mixed in other colors -- like Black since I still had India Ink fresh in my mind.  

I love how there are traces of the last pull on this one ...

Then on to purple and gold metallic paint.  Mmmhh!

Some of them even came out like watercolors -- This was aided by the fact that I sprayed some water on the plate to help any residual paint lift off onto the next print.   I like this effect, too!

 

The Gelli Prints video above showed this technique.  It will take some practice to make it look part of a well-planned composition.  But for now, it was fun to just try it and see how things come out ...

Denise is right!  Even the "junk" pages you use to unload your brayers can come out pretty, too!  These make interesting abstract pieces, too, with a transparent quality -- like glass suncatchers.

Here are the prettiest pages I used to unload the brayers :

2LO Texture-Making Class : Distressed Stains

This one has a dry-brushed look.

Continuing with Denise Love's Texture-Making Class at 2 Lil Owls.   I have been most interested in this technique with Ranger's Distress Stains.  I stocked up on the stains during a 40%-off sale at Joann's a few weeks ago.   I also had a variety of Starburst Stains from a class a few years ago, realizing they should work brilliantly on paper where as they were blah on fabric.   Now that I understand the technique, I can make some of my own textures with them. 

After the brilliance, vibrancy , and depth of the alcohol inks last week, I found it hard to shift gears with this new medium--even though I was looking forward to getting started.  I had such high expectations after the alcohol inks, these stained textures seemed to be a little meh in comparison.  Of course, it's not really fair to compare them.  This is a whole new medium with different techniques and different results.   (Just to check--the Yupo paper is a waste of time with these stains.)

Although I had watched the class video a few weeks ago, I thought I knew what to do and dug in ...  Mine were not coming out like Denise's though.  Turns out, I had not remembered to spray the watercolor paper to wet it down before pulling the print--nor was I using the heat tool to dry them quickly.   It makes a difference with wet paper vs. dry, and in letting them dry in their own time.  In some ways this is similar to the watercolor techniques that we started with.

I am also grateful for the scanner I have -- These actually look better (to my eyes) after being scanned and digitized that they do in real life.  There are layers and depths that my eyes seem to be missing in real life.  The only touch-ups these have had in digital is some slight cropping or straightening on just a few of the images. 

Apologies for this very looonnnggg post.  Too many delicious textures to leave out (and I did leave out a few).  Enjoy the eye candy!

 Black Soot and deep purple with the silver metallic.  

This one is hard to see in real life, but scanned beautifully!

 I think I was going for tree bark with this one.

 Red, black and silver.

 For these, I'd watched some additional videos on Distress Stains and learned that they reacted with water even after they were dry.   So this one has water dripped on it.

 These two kind of look like Amazonian rain forests from above.

 More tree bark.

Mmmmmmh!

Still haven't seen enough?  Denise Love has a couple of gorgeous collections in her 2 Lil Owls Shop that are based on these Distressed Stains.  They are absolutely breathtaking!  Go see :

Rendevous and Captivate are two of Denise Love's collections for sale, if you are so inclined.