During the Exploring Art Journaling Enrichment class I am teaching at my daughter's school this week, I introduced the girls (yes, all girls in the class!) to Splash Inks & Acrylic Inks. (If you missed last week's entry, you can find it here.)
Splash Inks (pictured below) are acrylic mixing colors that are very concentrated & vibrant. They can be mixed to make a huge array of colors without getting muddy. You can paint & illustrate with them & the result is similar to watercolors, but the colors are more pigmented than watercolors & are permanent when dry. (You can read more about them here; buy them here.)
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| Background made by Sarah |
Acrylic Inks (pictured below) are simply a watered down acrylic paint with deep pigments. These inks are gaining popularity in the mixed media world for their drippy effects & ease to illustrate with either using the dropper as a pen or applying ink with a pen nib.
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| Background made by Kylie |
We used a "splatter" technique by dripping/dropping ink onto our substrate (in this case, a piece of recycled cardboard); spraying the page with a little water, seeing the reaction & then blowing the paint around with a straw. I truly love this technique & have even sold a couple of my pieces using it! And watching the girls' reactions as the paint spread around to achieve an unplanned result was awesome!
Here are a couple of the samples I made in class for the girls...
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| Gesso'd cardboard to Splash Ink art! |
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| Drippy Acrylic Inks |
After the girls did their splash art, I showed them how to use stencils & masks to add another layer of dimension to their pages...The Trust Your Heart stencil was THE most popular - go figure! I also mentioned how they could make their own masks with photographs from catalogs & magazines by taping both sides of the page with packing tape & cutting out the image. That's how I got the following images for them to use...
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| Masks made from catalog photos |
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| The result using the potato sack girls from the catalog images |
So, I have rambled on enough...here are the girls' pieces - we didn't have enough time to stencil on all of the pages, but luckily we still have 4 more weeks of class!(Click on an image to enlarge.)
Some of the girls got a little over zealous with the acrylic inks where the colors got a little muddy, BUT I think the results are actually quite beautiful!
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| Alexis' work |
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| Brenna's work |
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| Brooke's work |
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| Ella's work |
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| Daphne's work |
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| Kylie's work |
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| Paige's work |
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| Sarah's work |
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| Sidney's work |
(I also had them do another mark-making page like last week in the hopes of getting stencil images & drips onto those before the hour ended, but maybe next time!)
Next week I will help them to finish up a couple of these pages & then we will start on some collage art!
Cheers!
5 comments:
HOW COOL Becky! I'm totally making me some masks a la Becky! :D
Great project! Giving the gift of art to kids is the best thing you can do!
The kids did terrifically - and good on you for taking the time to share your talents with them!
How fun is this! Never heard of the splash inks, now shall have to look for them. The kids must have adored you. xox
VERY fun, such wonderful results. That's a perfect class for that age, too--I'm sure they loved it!
:)
Thanks for showing us pictures of everything. :)I love it. I wish the inks weren't so expensive. Would love to get some.
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