The Common Denominator: July 2014

Monday, July 28, 2014

PanPastel Hop

What a thrill to be playing with PanPastels! LOVE these products, I've been using them for years and I simply never tire of their intense pigment. I use the pastels in encaustic work, on my journal pages and here, when trying to 'save' an ugly background.
Now, after me posting a couple of my 'mishaps', you might be wondering why I have so many ugly backgrounds hanging around?
Good question. Sometimes I am convinced that every piece of art must go through an ugly stage. Or maybe that's just me. Plus, I experiment a lot and am often messing around with products in ways they were not intended to be used, mainly because I don't have an art degree so I honestly don't know what you are supposed to do with some products. Ahem.....Needless to say, I sometimes end up with yuck. Here is a picture of the 'before' with just two stenciled portions.

This was one such piece. I can't even remember what I was doing, but it got super dark on the corners. And it was F-L-A-T.
Ugh.
So I decided to add my texture via Golden's Acrylic Ground for Pastels. Now keep in mind, this Ground is not really a texture product, it is more like a super toothy gesso that is used to prep a surface for working in pastel. Yeah, I even mis-use products that I have been trained to use.
But, I liked the idea of creating stenciled parts to use with the Pan Pastel and the Ground held up well.

I found that, by using the Acrylic Ground for Pastel, I could pretty much 'dry brush' (or 'dry sponge') the pigment over the Ground and somewhat retain my background color. Of course I got going a little more wild and wooly and ended up creating several layers of Ground. All the color shown here (except for the little bits behind the bird heads and daisy) were achieved with PanPastel.
Can you say YUM!
Here are my tips for working with PanPastels:

Use the Sofft Tools, the texture of these amazing sponges is simply perfect.
Keep a clean paper towel at your side while you work. Before you change color, wipe the sponge on the paper towel until you no longer see any pigment color coming off. This will ensure that you don't contaminate the next color you use.
Use less color than you think you need. One swipe provides more pigment than you can ever imagine.
Don't be afraid to experiment. I have created many cool effect with PanPastel and blending them out with gesso or other mediums. Remember, they are pigment!!
Check out the PanPastel website, specifically THIS PAGE, which I have found to be extremely helpful.

GIVEAWAY

We know after you see all the techniques we show you this week you are going to want to play too! Enter the GIVEAWAY to be eligible to win the prize below. Just leave a comment and tell us if you use PanPastels with stencils and your favorite technique. You can also leave comments on all of the individual posts this week on all the blogs from our team members for another chance to win! All comments within the 4 day period are eligible.

GIVEAWAY closes Sunday, August 3rd @ 11:59PM Central Time.

One comment per post please.

PRIZE

Monday

StencilGirl Talk

Mary Beth Shaw

Mary C. Nasser

Monday, July 14, 2014

Introducing NEW StencilGirl Artist Traci Bautista Blog Hop

I am excited to welcome my friend, Traci Bautista to StencilGirl Products, woo hoo!!! Her stencils are so her. So Traci, you could pick them up anywhere and know who designed them, she has such a strong artistic voice. I love that about her.
I've mainly been playing in my journal with the stencil masks - because that is what many of them are, masks. It is a subtle distinction in the stencil world. For me, I think of masks as the thing you reach for to cure all your mistakes, ha! I mean look at this page:

I had a bunch of color, no direction, this page was going nowhere fast. All I did was use the mask overtop the entire spread and sponged with gesso. Instant cute. I think it would be pretty cool to go back and do some doodles in those open spots. Or even journal words, patterned collage components, stencil over top or ? What would you do?
Here is another snippet, this time a painted paper towel, this is actually part of my upcoming webinar:

It is amazing to me how changing color and using only a portion of the stencil turned this into an interesting abstract - I took Traci's imagery and made it my own. Now *that* is good versatility in design.

Here is a collage of some of my pages, you can see some DLP here too, I am on week 2.....there is also a sneak peak at a project I did for The Mixed Media Workshop TV.