October Theme
Translucent Papers
Week 44 – October 31
Art Challenge: Tea Bags, Dryer Sheets, Fibrous Papers
Journal Prompt: Just Create!
I really love it when you can sit down and “just create” without it being a job, a commission, or art “on demand!” For this week’s challenge, I gave myself permission to play – just for fun, just for me!
The fibrous paper I decided to use was tea bags! I had a box of large tea bags in my pantry so I opened up 6 of them and emptied them out. I used the tea from just one bag to brew in boiling water. Once the water boiled, I put all of the opened, empty tea bags in the water and let it sit over night. When they were a nice vintage tea-stained color in the morning, I opened them up on paper towels and let them dry.
I decided to stamp all over my blank page in my art journal with a favorite script stamp and then I added a few butterflies and a dragonfly. I used permanent black india ink to stamp with and used my heat gun to set the ink so it wouldn’t smear.
Next, I used a clear gel medium to paint onto the page and adhered the tea bags, overlapping them randomly. I also painted gel medium over top of the tea bags. I let all of this dry for several hours so I would have a nice firm surface to sketch on.
Using a dark, soft lead pencil – I sketched a face among the butterflies. I love how the bumps in the tea bag helped to create rough lines and edges in my sketch.
To paint my face, I used Inktense watercolor pencils to “color” the face. The Inktense pencils are bursting with pigment and I love the vibrancy when I paint over the colored marks with a damp paintbrush.
I continued to paint until my little lady came to life! Once it was dry, I used a spray fixative to seal the page! That’s it – just creating in a simple way! I can’t wait to see what you all create this week using your fibrous papers!
I am so very pleased to share the work of Lynne Hoppe this week, an artist with incredible talent and a gracious heart! You can find the link to Lynne’s challenge HERE.
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Comments
Love the vintage look and luminosity of your page, Lorraine! Your portraits are always so gorgeous, too!
Beautiful! Love how she came out!
She is so beautiful! How creative.
Love this! Thanks for the inspiration every week!
If I take a trip in your sunny beach house, will I come out with butterflies in my hair and gorgeous dragon flies that match my eyes? She is lovely and the tea bags are so cool/hot as a substrate. When my daughter married, she released butterflies and several landed in her veil. It is the most beautiful picture that I can think of – change under happy conditions with a smile of pure joy and butterflies decorating her gown. Butterflies must feel so exuberant when they realize they can fly for the first time. When I lay gorgeous colors down it gives me a similar feeling – I’m taken away on a breeze of beautiful color to fly to a new world that I try to create. Thank you for this great butterfly moment of memory and fleeting excitement. Now to deal with costumes and candy. So glad you didn’t do orange and black today.
She is beautiful ! I can’t believe how closely our projects were related this week. That is a first. Your girl is so gorgeous and ethereal. I just love her, as I love all your girls. This was a relaxing week to create for sure! xo
Your page is beautiful! Your pages each week are so varied – you are quite an inspiration! I love your work.