Earlier this year while wandering the beaches nearby, I came across an unusually large number of Mermaids Purses in various colours and shapes, some I had never seen before. These curious flotsam that wash up on the tide are the egg cases of sharks, ray, dogfish and other similar sea beings and yet they conjure up something more mystical, magical and altogether more charming. Continue reading Mermaids Purse
I am sure I am not alone in this timelessness…no idea what day or date it is and the days seems to swirl by as weeks disappear into months. My idea to do a weekly blog post doesn’t seem to be reachable at the moment as other things take over. That really isn’t a big deal as I set that goal, and goals can be stretched and changed. After more than a year of lockdown, there are some really challenging issues that seems to come in waves of mental torture. Nature is my usual escape route, thankfully spring is springing which gives lots to marvel at. I find it difficult to settle to my creative pursuits. New goodies to play with helps though. I have some luscious silk tops and merino wool which I may incorporate into my textile works. I would like to try felting and use them in that, but that’s for another time… I found a UK supplier for silk fabrics and dyes instead of one in the US and I am happy with the quality. Continue reading For the love of Silk
It has been a super busy time here with gardening so little else has been done. A disused old greenhouse got a facelift and a veg garden planned. A bit late I know but the lady we rent our apartment from asked if we would give her garden a facelift. We live on a corner of an old demense with native woodland around us and a view to the sea. Delighted at the challenge and a few gorgeous day’s weather, we charged headlong into it. I sat down this morning and photographed a few finished pieces of mixed media work as promised in my last post. I have a few new ones started too using both modelling paste and marble paste. Continue reading Mermaids and more
Last year I decided I wanted to delve into more textural and sculptural effects for my mixed media work, it has taken until now to gather sufficient supplies to have a range to experiment with, to research and to decide what works for me. I can tell you, it was a minefield initially as there are just so many mediums out there and they all differ with brands too. I also am a bit of an alchemist (especially in the kitchen) so I liked the idea of making my own mediums from the raw minerals etc. To do that, one really needs to go back in history to see how things were done by the masters. Hence, marble powder was on my hit list. That arrived with my order from Germany last week. So I now have modelling pastes, texture pastes, crackle pastes, gesso’s, marble paste and air dried clays. All rather delicious!. Continue reading Acrylic pastes, gesso and texture
My parcels arrived from Germany and I am super pleased with the service and products. Over the last few days we did some product tests and experiments and I have almost finished the mixed media works from a few weeks ago.
We taped up some mixed media boards and used one for gels and one for pastes. Acrylic paints in neon, pearlescent and opaque were used along with acrylic inks, some were used under the mediums, some over and some mixed in to see how they behaved.
These are the gel mediums: Golden Soft Gel Matte, Galeria Black Lava Texture Gel, Liquitex String Gel, Impasto Gel Mat and Impasto Gel Gloss, Galeria Glass beads and Golden Glass beads also the Iridescent Medium. Continue reading Testing acrylic gel mediums
This week I have been working on a collaboration project which we hope to start to bring online in a month or two so keep an eye out for Wildly Created’s amazing products coming soon on a device near you…and in an Etsy shop. Also, I have been busy with my mixed media pieces. After the 60 x 20 cm “Fishing for Compliments” piece I posted about last week, I decided to go much smaller and incorporating a range of foraged and found materials and embellishments. I have some 10 x 10 cm canvases and some mixed media boards. I am using my new favourite mediums… modelling paste, crackle paste and glass bead gel until I receive a delivery of other products. Everything is of course taking much longer these days and increasingly harder to source with shipping costs and Brexit, plus Covid changing guidelines and related costs. Those of us living in Europe are looking to other European countries more than the usual UK favourites. If I find any websites I feel worth recommending, I will share. Evans Art in Dublin have been wonderful, a family fun business, reasonably priced and shipping times. Currently looking at German sites, but a lot depends on the VAT which I am noticing way more sites than before are not including VAT with prices, and shipping costs are by quote only. Many have reasonably high minimum order limits too which can be prohibitive for the smaller businesses and creatives. Yep, the struggle is real folks. Continue reading It’s often in the little things
So here is the finished first experimental piece combining modelling paste, glass bead gel, crackle paste, home-made air dried paper clay, acrylic inks, iridescent medium, acrylic satin varnish and found objects from the beach on stretched canvas 60 x 20 cms. The piece is more vibrant than the camera shows with a lovely shimmer from the iridescent medium and inks. Continue reading Fishing for compliments
Following my research and experiments into the realm of paper clay, I came across an amazing website with recipes. I was invited to write a guest post with my findings which went online yesterday. So here is the link. It talks about the differences of using ready-made joint filler versus dry powdered, with images of some test pieces. I wanted to learn how to make this type of clay for my latest project idea which combines different sculptural and textured mediums. I used the paper clay to make small hand formed shapes and in a silicone mould to make shells. They are lovely and light, so they won’t add too much weight to the pieces. They dried in a day too as they are nice and thin. The clay recipe does state that it should be applied in thin layers as too much may not dry in the middle and eventually rot. Therefore it is ideal for small features and very small moulds. Next stage is trying out the inks. Continue reading Paper clay tests
New goodies have started arriving and I’ve started testing them out. Gesso can be a bit of a hit and miss affair…the really cheap stuff is mostly cheap white acrylic paint mixed with a binder and dries shiny so I would recommend going for something mid priced to get a decent product. Of course that depends on what you are using it for. I wanted a shine free matt finish that I could work into to get marks, textures etc and then apply inks. For a primer to then apply acrylic paint, the cheap stuff would work fine. I am going to make my own gesso soon with plaster of paris so that will be for another time. These images are on a long canvas with cheap gesso and various mark making which produced a very thin layer and glossy finish. Not really what I wanted but may be useful on a different project, or, I may add some plaster to it. Continue reading Adding some texture
Karima Rebecca Powell Artist 