This week I spent most of my time experimenting with paint, mediums, and different substrates. I wanted to get away from just mixed media paper because it’s more difficult to frame, it takes quite a bit of work to flatten out the paper. So I tried hot and cold press watercolor paper, cradled wood boards prepped with multiple layers of gesso and one with absorbent ground, and gessoed and sanded stretched canvas. Reader, I didn’t like any of them. So yeah that sums up my week, a lot of work for nothing lol. It wasn’t all bad, some of the watercolor paper results were okay but nothing really exciting. Of course you don’t know until you try, so have to put the time in.
I also experimented with paint viscosity. I was already running out of a few colors of ink and was preparing to order more from Blick but then I thought: hold on, I have very similar colors in regular acrylic… Maybe I can save a lot of money here. So I thinned out a few colors of Golden heavy duty, fluid, and high flow paints. (Yes I have all the Goldens hence why I was trying to save lol) I found I really liked mixing the different types of paint but even when thinned down, none of the other acrylics behaved like ink. I thinned them with air brush medium and the ink, I think, must have distilled water? Because the viscosity is not the same. So I had to go ahead and order more ink but I’ve added a whole lot of options by combining the thicker paints with the ink. The thicker paint tends to sink to the bottom of the layers, which makes sense. It also does not move as freely so it’s a little more controllable even when the paper is full of standing water.
So overall the week was a little frustrating, no great leaps forward but still some baby steps. Also my Blick order will be here tomorrow, so yay. I’ve had stuff in my cart for ages but I always take forever to actually place my order. I feel like Blick stuff takes forever to arrive, so I really want to make sure I have everything I need in my cart. I spend 3 months trying to get my cart perfect, then it shows up in 5 days lol.