Resist!

Today's post isn't about resisting temptation to eat that slice of chocolate cake in the refrigerator ... the one that's calling your name and promising sweetly to be calorie-free!

This post will actually, yes, be calorie-free -- but its topic is creating a resist in your art-making.  An area of resist in your artwork becomes an area of special interest that holds the attention of a viewer.  

Important to note:  The finished art will be of the "painterly" style.  More about that at the end of this post.

You may already have acquaintance with resist if you like batik fabrics.  Wax is used as a resist in developing the beautiful designs characteristic of that fabric.

Supplies I used (with substitution ideas):

6" x 6" mask Champagne s960 

black watercolor paper of a sturdy thickness and weight   

heavy body matte gel medium (or heavy body gloss gel medium)

white gesso (or titanium white acrylic paint- but not zinc white.)

acrylic paints in just a few different colors

rags

water in a basin

a paintbrush or two

a sponge (or stipple brush) 

a spreading tool, such as the plastic artist's spatula shown below (You can substitute an old credit card, but use one of its narrow edges, not one of its wide edges, for the sake of better control in the first step of today's technique.)

Above:  This technique started with the same first step as the technique featured in my post of June 13 -- except that this time I've used heavy body matte gel medium.  

(On June 13, I used modeling paste. With both media, my next step was to carefully lift the mask from my substrate, so as to keep the design intact.  Immediately both times, I submerged my mask in a basin of water. That kept the leftover media from hardening, and allowed me to do the actual cleaning later, after having finished my art-making of the day.  Thick media -- heavy body matte gel, heavy body acrylic paint, etc. -- will, if allowed to harden, alter the shapes of the open areas of a stencil or mask, or plug them completely.)

For today's post, my substrate was black watercolor paper previously scribbled with water-soluble crayons.  Water-soluble crayon markings won't interfere with this technique, but marks of regular crayons might, since wax crayons themselves can be used to create a resist.  (I've already tried using wax crayons in making resists with stencils and masks; those results disappointed me so I abandoned that idea.)

Below:  While the matte gel medium was drying, I moved to the left side of the watercolor paper.  Holding my mask Champagne s960 in place, I applied white gesso with a sponge.  (I used liquid gesso but thick gesso would actually work better for this technique.  Had I chosen to use titanium white acrylic paint instead of gesso, I would have used the heavy body version of that color.)

Above:  Both the white gesso and the heavy body matte gel medium have dried.  In drying, the gel has become nearly invisible, but in the photo below, I've tilted the matboard to catch light with part of the gel.

Bottom left, above:  Light reflected off the surface of part of the print I'd made using heavy body matte gel medium.

Above:  I started to use the dry-brushing technique with the dried gel medium, but since I was too heavy-handed with the paint, I decided to cover the whole surface with a solid coating of paint, as shown below....

Below:  As soon as I'd finished coating the surface with paint, I moistened a rag with water and rubbed it across the still-wet paint.  My goal was to remove most of the paint -- the areas covered by the resist of matte gel medium -- while allowing some paint to remain.

Above:  With a different color of acrylic paint, I've started to coat the left-side print, made using white gesso.  

Not shown:  I repeated the step of wetting a cloth and rubbing it over the left-side image to remove still-wet green paint from the areas not covered by the resist of gesso.

Below are the two finished pieces.  But neither appeared like this after my first removal of still-wet paint.  For both these examples of resist in art-making, I several times repeated the painting step, following it with the wet-cloth removal, till I got results that I liked.

Above:  Slight texture shows on the surface of both art samples.  That came from the textured surface of the watercolor paper.  A smooth substrate would yield different results.  Neither approach is "right" or "wrong."  It's all about personal preference.  

Thanks for visiting my blog today! To scroll thru the pages of my masks and stencils at StencilGirlProducts.com, please start here.

To learn more about the "painterly" style of art, you may enjoy reading this.