Paint the Town Red...or Pink

I got the chance to try out the brand-new Artistro Acrylic Paint 24 set and I thought I'd let you know how it went. I have to start by saying I use acrylics only occasionally, in my art journal. And I took some Life Book classes and learned to use them a little more there. I am in no way an expert but I love all the art media, so I gave these a try.

The colors in this set are vibrant and rich, with a range of colors including gold and silver and large tubes of both black and white. The set also comes with three brushes and a palette. The paint has a nice smooth body, not too thin. I used water to thin some out and the color stayed bright, though it became more transparent. 

I drew some simple flowers with a sharpie on 80 lb. paper and used just a pink, yellow, blue-green and white to paint both doodles.

You can see that the paint does cover the black lines some and if I'd wanted to, I could've gone back in with the sharpie to darken them back up, but I was okay with how it turned out.

In this doodle, I watered down the orange I made, the pink and the green. The lines show up better when the paint is thinned out like this. But the paint still has enough body to show the paint strokes. I think if I had been working on gesso, the brush strokes wouldn't have been as pronounced.

The price point for these 24 paints, the three brushes and the palette run $32.99 on Amazon. It's a good price for the amount of paint, the vibrancy of color and the quality of the brushes (no stray bristles in my work). I'd purchase these for myself or a crafter. I love that you get larger tubes of white and black as well. I know I'll be using these paints more in the future. 

Hope you have time to play around with a new medium this weekend!

Happy Friday,

Chark

It's a Jane Davenport Kind of Day

I encounter Jane Davenport's art just through social media and then found out she has books and classes and art media with her name. So I bought some paints and books and have been coloring and doodling along in my Whimsical Girls Art Journal ever since. I haven't yet opened my paints, but it's on the list of fun art stuff to do. She sells some of these images as acrylic stamps too, so check out this page if you're interested.

Here are some of my latest pages from the journal. I don't think I'm finished with the background, but I purposely faded the dresses just to do something different.

This page is on watercolor paper, so I think I'd better use some paint on this one or at least more marker and water. I added the quote and I'm sure I'll be adding more doodles.

I love this fun quote, though I wish I'd lettered in pencil first, because I'm not too keen on the lettering. I might fussy cut her and adhere to another page.

Happy Friday and have a whimsical weekend!

Chark

More Whimsy

As I told you in the last post, I received the Jane Davenport Whimsy Girls Art Journal for my birthday and have been playing around with it. It comes with drawings and papers and stickers and then you add to it with colored pencils, markers or paints and collage. 

This girl's face came without hair, so I gave her some white and pink doodled strands.

She's printed on kraft paper and I knew I wanted to use white pencil with her. I used a white Uniball and other Prismacolor pencils in aqua and pink and doodled with a black Faber Castell pen. I think she looks like Marie Antoinette...I may have to go back in with some cake doodles.

The quote was there already too, but I could add my own. Did you know that Marie Antoinette said "pardon me, sir, I did not mean to do it" at the execution because she stepped on the executioner's toes? She's definitely not as bad as history makes her out to be. She was so young and inexperienced with ruling. I've read several books about her (I love me some historical fiction and biographies) and Confessions of Marie Antoinette was a good one.

I couldn't find a picture of what the journal girl started out like, but I'll try to do that next time. This journal is so fun...I love faces and doodling so, it's right up my alley!

Happy Wednesday!
Chark