Decided to give it a full-fledged effort and experiment with every leaf I had and every color paint I had. That was foolish, of course, because I have lots more paint than I can effectively use in only 1 afternoon, but I gave it a good shot!
I painted over several of the leaves that I did the other day. I wanted to add more color to them. I’m not really a purple person and so I wasn’t crazy about the ones that turned out kinda purplish.
I’m happier with them now.
Tried a nice batik print and wanted to show shadow or dark leaves. Rather bland until I added a touch of gold.
My inner magpie wanted to see hot pink and turquoise and lime green leaves so that I could add lots of beads, but I didn’t quite make it to that point. I got a lot of pink and green and some yellow into a couple of leaves, but I’ll save that really crazy bright stuff for another day.
I finally figured out that I’ve been buying the wrong kind of stencils for what I usually want to accomplish.
There are positive stencils and negative stencils. If I’m going to paint, it usually works better to have the design area cut out and paint in the ‘hole’.
I tried this stencil for gears and sponge painted around it, but I would have been happier and I think it would have been much easier to have the other kind of stencil!
Lesson learned: you may love the stencil, but you have to think hard about how you think you’ll use it before you buy it!
My initial objective in ALL this paint experiment stuff was to give paint a fair shot. I’ve never liked the way paint feels on fabric and so far I still don’t! I haven’t used the brand name paints that are supposed to retain a soft hand. I’ve just used the run-of-the mill acrylics that you can buy at any craft store. They’re fine for what I was doing and I’ll play with the “good” stuff another time…I’m thinking for more of the type painting I do when I use watercolors.
We’ll see…this will be a busy week with Halloween-birthday-anniversary so I may not get a chance. I think I know what I’ll be doing with these leaf prints, though, so I’m happy overall with my experiments. Lots of surface design playing in my future!
I am experimenting with Acrylic Inks. It is a very thin form of acrylics. I also have experimented with using Aloe Vera gel with my Procion dyes. They gel works as a medium or thickener. These are all just experiments so far. The gel can be bought at Wal Mart in the lotions dept. It is cheap.
I have acrylic inks that I’ve used with my watercolor painting but not yet on fabric. I have so many things to try out…thanks for the tip on the aloe gel. I’ve actually got a jar of that here, too! It’s just a bit too cold for more dye experiments right now. I can do some in the winter but it will be on a smaller scale. I just need more hours!