This Week in the Studio: Salt, Spray, and Sweat

Hello, friends!

While we've been shivering through our coldest winter in recent memory here (at least it seems that way every afternoon while outside waiting for the school bus to arrive), things are heating up in the studio.

Deb Fitzgerald, an art teacher at Lake Braddock Secondary School, recently asked me to visit the school to meet with her students. She occasionally invites local artists to her classes as a way for the students to discuss career ideas and explore different types of art. So, on Friday I'll be demonstrating printmaking and graffiti fusion techniques to her 7th and 8th grade classes. I'll be teaching them how to achieve textured, layered effects with some common household items. Hopefully the kids will find it interesting, and hopefully I'll be caffeinated enough to get through teaching the 1st class at 7:30!

Here's a look at the creative alchemy taking place in the studio this week, to prepare for the classes:

Basic painted backgrounds on transparency, sketch paper, and discarded cardboard packaging (l-r)

Spraying fabric paint through a stencil of die-cut scrapbook paper

Applying heavy-bodied acrylic on rubber shelf liner to a background

Graffiti with Sharpie poster paint markers over the rose stencil. In hindsight, I probably overworked this one. Will most likely cut it up for ATCs or backgrounds for handmade business cards.

Fabric spray paint over heavy-bodied acrylic

I really liked the distressed look of this background. I'd applied a very thick layer of gesso to manila folder. When dry, it felt like leather. It took a variety of textures pretty well, too.

Backgrounds made from watercolor paint treated with kosher salt (left and right), and fabric paint stencil on vellum (middle)

Music in the studio this week:

-- Original Cast Recording of American Idiot on Broadway
-- My Chemical Romance: Danger Days: The True Lives of the Fabulous Killjoys
-- Christina Perri: Jar of Hearts
-- Blue Man Group: The Complex