More and more faces and grounds to play with!!!!

Here trying to catch up. I stayed behind a bit again, because the grounds I am trying out needed 24 hours to dry before using them.

Face #10

This cute "Fae Princess" is a mixed media piece. I used Caran D'Ache gouache studio set, colored pencils, Sharpie paint marker and a bit of acrylic over a paper treated with Daniel Smith transparent watercolor ground. Here I used the gouache very diluted, making it transparent like watercolors.

I still don't know how I feel about this ground. I didn't find it to be too absorbent, although I did not use a very thick layer on the paper. I put two coats of this ground on the papers. It is indeed better than untreated paper; maybe some more experimentation, on other surfaces, is in order to give a final verdict about this. It does dry clear, which give you the advantage of using the substrate color to your advantage. It does comes with a white finish though. 

Face #11, "Forest Fae" was also created on paper treated with Daniel Smith transparent watercolor ground  but with this one I only used gouache. I really like her too, she looks innocent and sweet to me; maybe is that huge bright eye.

 Here I took advantage of the green of the paper, as it also inspired the color scheme. So the fact that the watercolor ground was transparent helped me here.

For face #12

The surface Martha Stewart stucco ground was used. I really enjoy working on textured surface. I feel it give a certain character and interest to the pieces. This ground too need 24 hrs to dry before using it.
I wish I would have applied it more uneven, an also used less concentrated acrylic so it has more dimension. Even though, I like the old weathered look it has. I will continue exploring this idea in other pieces.

Trying out some grounds

Hello there!! Hope you are trying out and experimenting with new things. Today I had some fun experimenting with fiber paste as a ground in order to prepare my page for my third face from the 29 Faces challenge.

This medium give the surface you apply it to nice texture, one similar to handmade papers. You can sand it a bit if you want, I did it bit, but then some of the nice texture was lost.

I think it is a medium worth playing with and trying it with different materials. For example, I used Prismacolor colored pencils, but I think it would be nice to pastels, charcoal, pencil and even paint. Anyway, here is my third face from the challenge. I decided to add more fiber paste over it to give it a different look.

As you can see, fiber paste doesn't have to be use just as a ground.