Michelle Ward posts a fabulous creative challenge each month on her GPP Street Team blog. This month she invites us to put away our paint brushes and play with scraping paint. Synchronicity seems to strike whenever I swing by Michelle's blogs. The day before I learned of this challenge I was noticing how cool the scraped paint looked on my brayer. Even the stairs up to my breezeway had some fabulous layers of paint showing through where we have worn them down. I had been thinking about how I wanted this effect in my paintings. The day after I read about this challenge, I received a new credit card in the mail. Now how cool is that? My desire and the tools just aligned.
I started with some lighter colors and scraped on greens, blues, and purples. I liked the look of scraping on the thick heavy acrylics (Windsor Newton) and then scraping on the thinner cheaper acrylics or visa versa. The feel of the paint and watching the results was a blast. I definitely liked the look of scraping on a lighter color (gesso, or yellow) to brighten it up. Once the page was dry I experimented with adding lots of water and scraping. This helped to lift up some of the layers of paint.
I made a mask/stencil by cutting out a shape from a magazine image. I went back in with a charcoal pencil to add some depth around the edges of the figure. I collaged onto it painted papers of maps and arrows. This is the first in a series of paintings that I'm working on called, "Get Lost."
Another moment of synchronicity happened this morning after finishing my first "Get Lost." I checked my e-mail and received this quote from gratefulness.org:
Loss makes artists of us all as we weave new patterns in the fabric of our lives.
~Greta W. Crosby
I have a stack of so many wonderful new papers from playing with this technique. It was so much fun trying out different paint colors and combinations. I'll post more images when I have a moment to scan them. Until then, I invite you to visit Michelle's blog. Be sure to click through on the links found on the left to see how other participants experimented with this technique.
Thank you Michelle for a great prompt!
Kathryn, Collage Diva














