Working With Texture Paste

Texture paste. It is a love/hate relationship we have. I love to work with it, but I don't always love how it turns out. Then I have to find a work around. Let me show you what I mean.

I've done these art journaling steps many times in the past. I started with my Harmony cold pressed watercolor block from Hahnemühle and placed down strips of painters tape - dividing my page into two work sections for two separate pieces of art. I covered each section with a layer of clear gesso, then placed down some sections of book pages. These happen to be from A Christmas Carol. Next, I brushed more clear gesso all over the tops of the text, sealing the edges. 

Here is my trash plate. Hahahaha! A simple styrofoam plate that I can use over and over until I get sick of it. The paint you see in blobs is cheapo Walmart bottles I bought for fifty cents each. Apple Barrel brand. Acrylics. I knew these were the main colors I wanted to work with for my background. 

Using a small, flat brush I just stroked the color onto my page in an up and down motion. To make sure my work areas were completely covered with paint I just painted right off the page onto the tape. Who cares what the tape looks like, right? Hahahaha! Tracy Weinzapfel is teaching this process on her YouTube channel. I have adapted it and combined it with how I usually work. Make sure this is totally dry before you move on to the next steps. I used a heat gun. 

You are used to seeing me dab and stab color through a stencil. This time I went with something else - texture paste. Typically I will add some bits of texture paste when I make ATCs or art journal pages. And sometimes it works great like it did on this page. Hahahaha! I chose a few of Joggles' Itty Bitty stencils that are made for ATCs - I just feel like I have more control with a smaller stencil. Holding the stencil firmly in place, I scraped the paste over the stencil using a palette knife. Just scrape and allow the paste to fill the holes of the stencil. Then carefully lift the stencil away from the page and go wash it off. That texture paste dries like concrete. You can speed up the drying process on your page with a heat gun, but I usually just sit it aside and work on something else till this dries completely. 

I had never used the deer stencil before and thought it would go great with these colors in the background. I had a little trouble with the trees - apparently I didn't hold down my stencil firmly enough and some paste slid underneath. I cleaned it up as well as I could with my palette knife, but there is still some funky stuff going on with that tree on the left. Hahahaha! 

If you notice, I used one stencil to place over both pieces of art at the top. I just added the paste all the way across, even over the tape. 

Once the texture paste was completely dry, I added color to my stenciled areas. How? Place the stencil back down over the texture paste. Line it up as perfectly as you can. Then hold it firmly while you add paint over the textured spaces. I went one shade darker in that red/ pink line that I used in the background and used a stencil brush. Not perfect. There are still some white areas and that is ok. I still had other steps to take that would help with that problem. 

And I used the brown from the background to paint my deer and trees. Where I had a mess happening with that one tree - I simply used a paintbrush and added some brown to those areas as well. If you look at this photo large, you will also see some white smudging underneath the deer's ear on the left side. I couldn't add paint there because it would make the ear misshapen. So I had another idea in mind to help with that. 

I had this stencil left over from my scrapbooking days. I dabbed and stabbed Archival ink through the stencil to add some words. 

Same here. Same stencil. But I could still see that white smudge. 

I used two colors of ink to add splatters to my pages. A white from Winsor & Newton and a violet Bombay India ink. I just splattered all over everything, including my iPad screen. Ick! Watching M*A*S*H reruns. 

My hope was all the splatters (or is it spatters???) would detract from the white smudge and I believe it worked. I know it is there - so I see it. But, if I didn't know it was there - would I notice it? I do not think so. Hahahaha! Sorry. You know how I am. And all that was left was to remove the painters tape. Gently pulling away, not towards. And if your tape starts to pull up paper - heat the tape with a heat gun, just blow hot air on the tape then gently remove it. Tracy taught me that. 

Left hand side. When I removed the tape, it took along with it all the texture paste and paint that was adhered to the tape as well. And just left behind nice clean edges. 

And this one is my favorite. I think it is pretty much perfect! Hahahaha! If I was looking for perfection. Which I try not to do because nothing I do is perfect. That's part of being human. We are works in progress. And hopefully working each day to be a nicer person, a more caring person, a kinder person, and a better artist. Yep. Had to toss that in there, too. Let me leave you with a couple links. 

Harmony Cold Pressed watercolor block from Hahnemühle can be purchased here. 

Tracy's YouTube channel is here.