Another experiment – I picked up two new colours and a new gloss medium, and wanted to try them all out.

The background is Hooker’s Green (System 3), and the metalwork is done using Ara Dark Bronze. This is gorgeous stuff, but it’s a nasty one to clean up – I had to go back to one brush and wash it over again. The catalogue suggested that the Rheotech gloss medium would also work as a hard, permanent, waterproof glaze/varnish, so I decided to try that out too. It ends up as a relatively low gloss, but still brings out the colour of the background beautifully.

I need to work on getting a more even texture for the varnish, but it still works.

Awhile ago, I got handed a couple of free notepads at a promotional event. A good size, and not bad paper – too glossy for sketching with most tools, and not thick enough to paint on normally, though, so they’ve been languishing on the shelf since.

And in my paint box I discovered a tube of the most horrendous pink acrylic I’ve ever seen. It’s ‘dusty rose’, and whilst that name may conjure up horrors they’re nothing to the reality. It’s rather like salmon pink, but without any of the latter’s implications of pleasantness, prettiness, restraint, attractiveness, or general good taste.

So of course I sloshed it on, whirled it around, let the paper soak it up, curl, and wrinkle, and then when it was dry I brushed metallic gold acrylic very thinly over it. The combination of the paint texture and the change in the paper surface with the curling and drying gave it an interesting tooth, especially with a very dry brush. I may well do more with it later, since I now have a piece of pretty paper, but I also have the habit of scanning intermediate stages in and saving them for background textures, so I thought I’d share this one with you all.