wildbird@heart: Mixed Media Work Apron

I thought I 'd jazz up a black apron to use while I'm painting to save my clothes from those unforgiving acrylics. I figured if they were so hard to get off my clothes, then a good thick brushstroke here and there on my black apron would stay put unless I washed it often.

As I stated the process I didn't even think about taking photos. So, I will have to describe what I did in words, for the first part anyway...

I laid out my apron flat on a table with a plastic tablecloth underneath and using a thin piece of chalk I sketched out a face, neck and hair of a girl. I blocked in the flesh areas with flesh acrylic (next time I would use a gesso undercoat). I didn't use any water, just paint out of the bottle.

I got so carried away working on such a large face, as most of my artworks are quite small, that I kept developing it for a while before I realised I should be thinking about the rest of the design! Next time I would leave the painting of the face until closer to the end.

Anyway, here is where I stopped....

She is not too pretty and the black is showing through....creepy, however she will be transformed by the end of this post.

I started thinking about what the quickest way would be to cover the apron with a painted design.

Out came some stencils and a stamp with large dots, some sequin waste and acrylic paint markers. Also Chroma Mural Paints, which turned out to be quick and easy to use.

They have a fluffy dauber tip, they are easy to apply and they make great big dots! All the colours in the range are opaque and they have fluorescent colours as well as brights.

I bought them at Riot Art when they had one of their sales because I thought they would be easy and less messy for my younger students. I decided the image on the bottle was too scary so they haven't used them much.

I continued filling in the black apron overlapping stencils a little, making dots with the fluffy daubers, and more dots with the sequin waste and using dot stamps as fillers. Details and lettering was added with acrylic markers. Sometimes I needed to go over the letters a few times.

I'm sorry I haven't photographed how I painted the face, I guess I just got lost in the moment... perhaps I'll make a face tutorial further down the track.

Here is a brief explanation...I gave the face another thick coat of flesh and watered down raw umber for the shading. When dry I used a medium bullet tip permanent marker for the feature outlines. Continuing with warmer, lighter flesh tones and lighter highlights using acrylic paints. Finer details and a little more colour with Inktense pencils completed the face. The hair was drawn with a large brown acrylic paint pen and lighter strands with a gold paint pen. Black marker was applied for shading.

Finally I gave the face a spray of fixative.