"Fearfully and Wonderfully Made" (Draft 3)

This, of course, is the third draft of "Fearfully and Wonderfully Made" from Psalm 139: 14. Tomorrow I will be posting the final.

As you can see, I have added another color. To fully integrate this color into the piece, I used the same textural stamp to create some more mono printed papers. The application of these blue printed pieces was deconstructed by adhering them to the support...waiting a few minutes and then deconstructing them by lifting up an edge and pulling the paper off. This is one of my favorite techniques because the "pulled up" edge becomes very thin and drifst off into nothing, revealing part of the previous layer.

The blue prints were made by pouring a small bit of Cobalt Blue (Fluid Acrylic) onto the printing plate and then spraying with water. This creates a puddle of color which is then suitable to lay the rice paper into. It will take a little while to dry and may be too wet to hang up. This type of printing is best done with a hair dryer. I only use acrylics to get a particular color that I like,  but I always use Speedball Printing Inks for fine printing. You can see the beautiful print this ink makes in the black portion in the top half of the piece.

I also adhered some bits of plain rice paper in areas where I felt like the value was getting too muddy. And then more bits of plain paper were added on top of the previous ones. By allowing the edge of the previous papers to show, you can achieve a gradated effect which appears throughout the piece.

Tomorrow, I will probably adhere a few more bits of the printed text in key areas and then letter the quote in the white area just above center. It will be written in very informal versals with Moon Palace Ink and a Mitchell 6 nib. There have been many changes since the first two layers on Monday. I hope this helps those of you who are tip toeing into the world of mixed media.

This is only one way to work so look at work by other artists working in mixed media and soon you will be finding your own voice in this provocative medium. And there you have it...just a few more things to think about.