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Coloured papers? What are they like? Does anyone but mixed media artists use? Who else can benefit from them?
Well, pastel artists use soft colored and lightly tinted papers to bring out the subtleties and harmonious tones and strong dark toned paper for pushing dramatic contrasts. It is also important to consider that although charcoal works equally well on colored and white papers, the smoother surface will offer different opportunities and increase the possiblity of smudging.
Buying paper on a whim could be expensive, even through eBay, so as a rule, the big Art Shops have paper samples that will allow you to experiment with the textural quality that you think works best. This could be problematic if there are no art shops near you, so in those cases you may want to visit the paper manufacturer’s site, or the art shop that you a regular patron and ask for a sample. Many will oblige though they may charge postage or require a SASE, and then send a small sample; sometimes they are generous. It depends upon when you hit them with the request and how busy their customer service department is.
Remember though that each manufacturer plays with labeling so that it is not easy to compare amongst them, and that there is no paper standardization outside of size.
No matter what you choose, make sure that the paper can hold up to erasure, rubbing and other paper techniques and still lose neither its tooth nor color.
Well it depends what type of paper you use…
Well the key ingredient is that the paper must have a tooth to hold either charcoal or the pastel marks and for collage, glue. To determine that, the word “tooth” is commonly used to describe the surface characteristic of the paper, and this paper is basically “rough”. To get that roughness, the paper needs to be air dried and the more tooth a paper has the rougher it feels to the touch. Some dyes or inks may adhere poorly to papers with very little tooth. This “rough” paper is a preferred surface texture for charcoal and pastel art
On the other hand, some artists though prefer laid paper which is characterized by its distinctive parallel lines that are visible when the paper is help up to the light and have the surface quality of a watermark. Laid paper, is usually composed of a pulp mixture of cotton and linen fibers, rags content , and is somewhat thicker than the normal typewriter or computer printer paper that most of us are familiar.
Laid paper is made via a fine screen of parallel copper wires, reinforced with wider spaced copper wire at right angles and then the pulp is pressed onto this screen to dry, which leaves an impression of the wire screen. This impression may easily be seen over a light box, or halogen desk lamp, sometimes it may even be visible to the naked eye, if one looks hard enough, learn to see the difference; your work will prosper.
And finally there are artists that prefer sand-coated papers made specifically for pastel and charcoal. These papers are coated with a variety of abrasives and they are not very good for gluing because the abrasives repel the glue.
The basic collage supplies are acrylic paint, gel mediums, cutting tools, and various surfaces. After that masking tape — that sticks, bone folder to press folds in paper. it used to be pure bone but now is often found as cheap plastic. petroleum jelly,vinegar and bleach — your basic household acids, commercial rusting products I.e. Modern Options (which allows you to rust things that are not metal), Patina solutions (also from Modern Options, which adds a great patina to just about anything. Bleached beeswax — natural has a brown patina — is best as it is white or clear. Nail polish remover for removing beeswax and Crayola wax crayons.
For transferring you need Elmer’s Squeeze and Caulk or if the budget is no problem then Liquidtex or Golden’s Acrylic Medium in Gloss. And for tape go clear and not white.
Heat transfers are best done with a woodburning tool as a regular iron is bit large to maneuver into tight spots. If you do like ironing better, a travel iron is great. A small crock pot is great for the beeswax above, if you can’t find one than go to a double boiler over the stove top. Embossing gun — I love them.
Stamps. Go for those simplistic deeply etched stamps; like woodblocks or make your own from fun foam. This idea works well with beeswax.
I found this site with cool creativity tips. Click here and you can see the whole spiel. The one that really caught my interest was the tip from Thomas Alva Edison, though I don’t know if its true. Still it sounds great. But’s here are 5 super cool things that Julia said in her various books:
Zettiology was created by the couple of Tracy (husband) and Teesha(wife) Moore, www.teeshamoore.com who have copyrighted that term. You could read more about it on their site but have also devoted another (domains are cheap these days after the dot com bust) at www.zettiology.com . If you search with the term zetti over at flickr.com but you will see after a while no everyone really understands the term. That is part of the fun, learning and perfecting your zetti-ness.
So exactly what is Zetti? Well I do tend to think that zany is the best word for summing this up, because the key to zetti is being rather incongruous; . Zetti is not related. Zetti is orthogonal. So with that in mind, zetti tends to be….
* ~Black/white stripes, someone or something always seems to have stripes somewhere.
* ~Elongated necks, heads, bodies and arms. Zetti is a personafication i.e. faced of something.
* So while you don’t see rocks and trees being zetti; they could because zetti has a face. If there was a Christmas tree, you could make it zetti but making the star a face, not a body, and that tree would be zetti. . If anything is the zetti-key, this is probably it.
So after conquering that, there are other things that make zetti:
* ~Faces pieced together: Cut out the eyes of one face and place them on another, however, er whatever, zetti must be faced.
* ~Tall pointy hats: or funky hats, stripes on the hats or any of this on hair, so you can see pointy hair, the wild striped hats on a tall skinny body with the had of a cat.
* ~Fat round bodies, tall skinny bodies, but zetti faces have bodies even if it is a tree, a cat or just a bit of striping. Something is holding that face up.
* ~Pointedness becomes triangular.
* ~Scribbles, doodles, swirls and polka dots somewhere on something.
* ~Typically words are added in for a dissonant effect because this is collage.
Send a post if you want to add to the definition, or send a link to something that you think really is zetti. Enjoy.
Interference paint is all about making paint “sparkle” and have a sheen to it much like pearlizing on cars. A popular way to use it, is with gold-colored matte paint, as it creates the reflection of true “gold”. How it does this is by breaking up the solidity of the color , chemically interfering with the acrylic and so transofrming the bright acrylic look and into pigment.
In short it is a cheap way to obtain an expensive result.
One popular method of using interference paints is as a “relief”. Here you mix equal parts of a transparent acrylic or watercolor with the Interference paint over some lines you have drawn. You may do this if you want the lines, say of a hand, to take a “fuller” look i.e. more angelic, and so add a sheen that makes a cragged hand in prayer look like a heavenly light is beaming on them. You have probably seen this effect used allot in those type of mass-market artworks and wondered how it was done. The technique it actually quite old and was used with gouache and tempera to get the “look”, i.e. a cheaper paint taking on the expensive pigment look.
What’s interesting is that the technique comes to paint from glassblowing and I actually have a piece or two with that technique used on them. It gives the glass a more etheral look without the need for light — something that glass is very particularly dependent upon.
You can find interference paints almost from every major paint dealer including Liquidtex, Golden and Ranger.
One of the first places to consider are magazines that you already read or subscribe to because you know what they do, you like it and often either intentionally, or unintentionally emulate it. So that should be first on your list. If you don’t know how to contact them, check either the magazine either or their website. See if they have a contest or a “reader’s review”.
Remember that work submitted usually cannot be posted to a blog or other photo-site (photobucket, pbase, flickr.com, glowfoto.com etc.) and that it must be original work and of course fit their requirements in size or material used.
After you have checked the magazines you read or own, visit your local bookstore or for those in cities, magazine stand, and look their magazines and see what you’ve missed, what new publications have come out since you made your last look and also what other niches, like drawing, paint magazines, you may fit.
After that, here is a good list to check. There are many magazines out there for the artisan. They are good to get as they keep your abreast of the the latest trends. Why is that important? To get out of your comfort zone and make art that has few imitators. People like to buy something unique and they will pay high amounts for things that are one of a kind thing; of course you could go the “craft” route and make lots of things for low amounts, but sooner or later you are going to burn out from that, so you may as well be prepared for the next step.
Claudine Hellmuth recommends that you frame your collages yourself . She recommends in her book, Collage Discovery Workshop, that you buy plain old lattice molding from either Home Depot and Lowe’s. It is very easy to cut, and requires no saws; scissors will do. Then you screw the joints together and voila you have her 75 cent solution.
I on the other hand don’t routinely frame my work, except when I am giving it as a gift and then I get them from Target in the discount area. To each his own … and then some.
