Happy New Year

On the Eighth Day of Christmas

I give to you.......

My Triptych

submission that was published in the January/February issue

of Cloth Paper Scissors

with an explanation about each piece

and

one of the great things that I discovered while painting these.

But first, let me remind you that the Triptych Challenge was to use one image presented three ways, using a variety of media. There was a size restriction that each panel could be no larger that 6 X 8.

I used an image of my daughter, Melissa. You already know that all the nest with eggs were my personal images from last spring. The nest were transferred to the canvas with transparency prints using gel medium.

The Traveler

On this one, I transferred Melissa's image from an ink jet transparency print using Golden's soft gel. The flesh tones were accomplished using StazOn refill solvent in Saddle Brown mixed with titanium white acrylic. A speck of Naphthol Red Light was also used for the pink tones.

The tea napkin used for her head scarf had traveled to me that very day from Chantal in England. The butterfly is also a personal image from my garden.

Daughter

Melissa's image was transferred from a plain paper ink jet print with soft gel medium. I started the flesh tones with water color crayons; however, I think those layers were subsequently covered with a mixture of Folk Art Skintone and heavy body acrylics.

The word "daughter" was a serendipitous discovery in the collage text. It is just above the butterfly left wing. You know and I know that this little bit of serendipity was Norah'S doings but I didn't tell CPS that.

I have to tell you that I was pretty amazed at the discovery. Remember it is my daughter's image.

Idle Fancy

For Idle Fancy, I used my daughter's face and hand image printed on plain paper with ink jet printer and glued down. Heavy body acrylics were used for the flesh tones.

The collage includes a piece of old high school band music given to me by a sweet friend. Her sleeve was cut from my stash of sandwich wrap papers that I use to catch the over painted edge of pages when altering books.

Next is the real Eighth Day of Christmas

stamping tip.

Part of the challenge was to push yourself to try products in new or unconventional ways.

I did and it led me to a fantastic discovery.

First of all, I would have never thought to use StazOn refill solvent mixed with acrylic. But it did work; although, I'm not sure that I liked it in lieu of just painting flesh tones with acrylic.

What I did learn is you can stick the tiny brush directly into the top of the bottle and paint with the ink. The brush will load with enough ink to paint tiny detail lines like eye lashes etc.


Then, I cleaned my brush by rubbing it on the felt pad in the top of the StazOn All-purpose cleaner.

Cleaning my brush is when it happened.

A happy collision with StazOn cleaner.

I discovered the clean little brush still a bit damp from the cleaner can be used to clean up any StazOn stamped image that did not meet your expectations.

You get do-overs.

This works on canvas and even watercolor paper if you have used a medium over it. Of course it won't work on just plain paper.

So in addition to cleaning up or even totally erasing a stamped image you can also use the little brush that is still damp with the cleaner to blend or smudge the StazOn ink when that effect is desired.

When I want to totally remove a stamped image that just didn't land beautifully, I use a q-tip.

When too much ink gets on the pad in the top of the cleaner, just dab the pad with a towel and the ink transfers to the towel.

The little bottle of cleaner says "all purpose" but nobody ever told me these purposes.

Did anybody ever tell you?

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

I look forward to sharing it with all of you and just want to tell you how much I love love hearing from you all.

More later,

Sharon