Monday 21 July 2014

ILLUMINATED POINTILLISM

Hi and welcome to my 100th post! This month at Anything But A Card, it's been... anything goes, so I decided to resurrect a couple of art techniques I often used in the classroom... illuminated lettering and pointillism.
These are fantastic techniques, but I've only used the basic ones for this project, using materials I had readily available, namely brush-tipped marker pens, gold metallic pens, 3D Stamping Paint and Inca Gold. Ideally I would have liked to have worked the lettering with gold leaf, but didn't have any in my supplies at the time. Pointillism is usually done with paint applied in layers of small dots (check out the artist Seurat). In the classroom this wasn't always a feasible method, because kids being kids, wanted to see as finished product on the day it was started, so I devised an adapted version using textas or marker pens and had them build up layers of colour on their art works. This also taught them a great lesson in blending of colours to produce depth and interest. For my little poster, I've combined the two methods.

 
 
 I started by lightly sketching my initial and then painted in the outline using a fine brush and gold ink ( Delicata gold stamp pad)
  

 
 
The background was sketched and then I started filling in the space with small dots of texta colour. To achieve the  depth of colour and variations in the landscape, I used different tones of the same colours.
 
 

 
 
 

 
 
 
 
 
I painted the whole of the letter in the gold ink, and added colour to it with metallic markers.  This then became the base colour for the next layers. Firstly, over painting with copper- coloured 3D Stamping Paint, then topping this with  Inca Gold, using a water brush. 
 

 
The coloured metallic ornamentation was topped with Glossy Accents, to make them look more
jewel-like. 
 
 

 
 
 This piece was added to background of black cardstock which had been stencilled, again with gold ink. Words were added with the same ink and Glossy Accents applied over the top. 

 
The whole piece was then mounted onto another background and inspirational text added as a border. I haven't decided how this is going to be displayed so it has not had anything attached for hanging.
 
Thank you for dropping by. There's still time to be involved in the challenge.. Anything Goes at Anything But A card. Why not pop on over to:  http://anythingbutacard.blogspot.ca/ and have a peep at what the rest of the team have done and also at the amazing entries we've received this month. I'm sure that you will certainly be inspired.
 
Cheers for now.
Di
 
 
 

4 comments:

  1. Di, this is gorgeous!! Your pointillism skills are amazing!!
    We did a preschool summer camp one year and had a featured artist of the week. We painted with cotton swabs for our tribute to Seurat. Their paintings were great, but I love the idea of using markers to get more of the blending effect!

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  2. What a great revisit of some your favorite old techniques Di, I love the effect all the dots gives your card. I think its always fun to visit some of the your favorite artists as your muse too!

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  3. Congrats on your 100 posts - I love this piece so much to see thanks for the inspiration -

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  4. Hi Di!
    This is sooo cool! I have never tried this technique, because I'm the most impatient and this looks like a lot of effort! I admire that! Brilliant!
    Ingrid xx

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