layered painting

For this technique you need different types of paint, foam brushes and a surface to paint on. I worked with textile paints (opaque and transparent) and acrylics. The surfaces I used were fabric, brown wrapping paper and canvas. The fabric I used was a hand dyed one, which looked dull and definately needed more.

I prepared my working space by covering it with old newspapers, but plastic will work just as well. Crunch your fabric or paper and iron it flat. 

The colors will overlap. Keep this in mind when you pick your first color. If you start with a yellow transparent and use a blue one for the next session, you will have green. Pick a color of paint and a foam brush and dabb the paint so that it looks like this:

 

No need to be precise when you dabb the paint. Let it dry and iron your pieces. They will look like this:

Not yet very interesting, but that will change because we are going to repeat this process several times. Apply as many layers of paint as you want till you have an interesting looking result. This is how my samples looked at the end:

It was the first time that I used canvas for this technique and I discovered that the thickness of the material made it difficult to use. Even after ironing it did not want to stay flat but remained like this:

I applied the paint as best as I could, but for the next sessions I folded straight lines and ironed these. That worked much better.