More Texture Paste and Hahnemühle

 

I love working with this paper! What paper am I talking about? Why, The Collection Cold Pressed Watercolor paper from Hahnemühle, that paper. I have almost used an entire block lately. The Collection comes ten sheets to a block. I have one sheet remaining. Yayay!!!! Let me show you what I did here. 

I began by taping my page into two sections, using painters tape. This tape is great! If you use it, make sure you have it pressed down well so the paint doesn't seep under the edges. BUT if it does - I have been successful using a white eraser to remove those pesky little bits of escaping awesome! Anyhoo, I began with a layer of clear gesso all over. I used that same gesso to adhere and seal these bits from a couple pages in A Christmas Carol. I used clear gesso because I wanted to be able to see the text. Yes, mostly it was going to get covered up with paint, but I wanted the 'feel' of that text to be there. 

I started a new trash plate. Hahahaha! Actually I have three I'm working with. When one has wet paint on it and I don't want the colors to mix, I grab a dry trash plate and continue. Here I squeezed out bits of three blues, a teal, white and some burnt Sienna. 

I used a flat black tulip brush from ZenART and painted on my colors. I love these brushes! I just painted up and down and I added some of that burnt Sienna. See the text? You can still read parts of it. Hahahaha!

I brought out my set of Itty Bitty Stencils from Joggles - I have been collecting them for awhile - and chose a few to use with texture paste. Using a metal palette knife, I scraped the texture paste across the stencils making these white areas. Then I sat this aside to dry completely before I continued. Don't have a palette knife? An old credit card will do the same trick. 

I went through my stamps looking for any words or wordings that might be appropriate and decided on these. The first stamp didn't go well, I had a little bobble. Oops!  But not to worry, I fixed that later with a pen.

And here is my second piece of art. If you try this - remember to hold that stencil flat and tight to your paper as you add the texture paste. If you do not - you may get paste smudged under the edge like you see with that first fish. Total teaching moment here. Hahahaha!

Here they are side by side again - after I removed the painters tape. One sheet of The Collection paper yielded two pieces of art. I used a stencil brush to add color over the textured areas. The easiest way to do that is to place the stencil back down over the area you added the texture to and just stipple color over the stencil. I also added some white highlights here and there, I fixed that bobbled oops! bit in my text, and I tried to cover up that fishy smudge. 

Still some bobble oops! there but not as much. I love how this turned out. If you have not used texture paste before - it dries hard. Like concrete. 

Two awesome pieces of fun art! I love it! I have tried so many different ways to use The Collection. I did a review of it here and I am still playing. 

The Collection from Hahnemühle can be purchased here. 

Black Tulip brushes from ZenART can be purchased here. 

Itty Bitty Stencils can be purchased here.