Still painting

Above are 3 Artist trading cards that I just recently painted and sent away to a friend.

I used Matisse paints, because I have many tubes left over from my folk art painting days. Matisse paints are a Australian owned, family owned company. They are lovely products with rich transparent colours but some colours can be expensive, they go a long way and have a long shelf life.

They were painted with Matisse flow on a piece of watercolour paper that was cut to size. As this is flimsy I backed it with some black cardstock using some acid free craft glue.

First is spritzed the paper with water, then using Matisse rose madder and Australian sienna on my pallet I used an angle brush to add the colours, first use the sienna then sparingly with the rose madder. The rose madder is quite a strong colour and mixes beautifully with the sienna giving different shades as it mixes. These are my favourite go to colours.

While this was drying I took a seed stencil and using a baby wipe I removed some of the colour through the stencil, ghosting. Next I used a little Matisse impasto medium placing the same stencil over the ATC's and applied the  impasto medium through the stencil randomly on the card. let this dry naturally otherwise if you try to use a hair dryer or heat gun you will change the impasto medium it will bubble loosing the shape.

When this was all nice and dry I applies some Matisse metallic bronze over the dried impasto medium using my fingers.  I then added a little water to the metallic bronze and splattered this over the cards. dry well.

The circle I used some decorated paper left over from another project and cut out some circles gluing them onto the cards. The stamps are used postage stamps. I then used Raw umber around the edges using an angle brush and my fingers. Then I used a white Signo pen to add a little high lights, you could also use a liner brush with white paint. 

The Photograph below is another project I am working on but using the same paint colours, so you see the colours clearly before I decorated it.

Use what you have, test your colours, play, you may be surprised as to what you find. 

 Have fun!