A watercolour painted on shiny card primed with absorbent ground

I coated a piece of shiny cereal packet card with several coats of absorbent ground to see if it would take watercolour paint well. I painted a view of Brownsea Island in Poole Harbour. I was able to create texture effects in the ground prior to paintng which was an interesting idea.

Here's the video

Poole Harbour watercolour by Gabriella after Ray Balkwill

I painted a Poole Harbour scene after following a Ray Balkwill exercise in his book. I used similar colours and his boat in my scene. I was only working on a small scale again. My own style comes through quite strongly and it has none of the looseness that Ray's work has. I'm happy with it though as its ok to be me.

Link to video of me painting this

Ray Balkwill Watercolour Exercise from his book by Gabriella

Exercise from 'painting landscapes with atmosphere' by Ray Balkwill'. I used a lemon yellow with a cadmium yellow and a raw sienna. Blues were winsor and manganese and reds were a rose and a cadmium. I painted this at too small a scale really and mention the improvements at end of video

Link to my video

DIY Absorbent Ground

I decided I wanted to use my oil paints over a wax resist on paper that I could etch into, but how to protect the paper??? I needed a ground, but not acrylic gesso as its not absorbent enough and I also want to use that as a partial resist later on. Golden Absorbent Ground is expensive and I only want to experiment so I decided to make my own. Link to video 

This is my first test, its a mixed media miniature on poor quality paper roughly coated with my DIY absorbent ground. Link to video

Here's the results of the second test with two coats on shiny card. This gives a real surface to paint on, otherwise impossible on the shiny card. Link to video

Collage based on Klimt

First I printed out Klimts tree to A2 size

Then turned it over and drew round the main shape

Then traced it onto 180gsm A2 paper and started to glue on tissue

I was aiming for a slight texture and using a bristle brush and pva glue

I wouldn't bother with the swirls again..too hard

Here I am pushing tissue down with brush end

Once dry I rubbed an oil crayon over and started to try my stamped motifs

I had made stamps using corks and made lots of motifs to try

The blue paper is out of a magazine and printed white with the end of a cork

I ripped up bits of green from a magazine page to try

then tried the ginger colour too. Took away the motifs while I work on the tree.

Painted the background with gouache and oil crayon and glazed the tree with glitter glue

Added  'old mans beard' seeds but they were too spidery!

Collaging the ground

Added hot wax scribble lines from a tjanting and used ochre oil crayon on them. 

Not that effective or worth the bother but interesting to try.

I have since added my motifs and completed the ground. I have cut the black centres out of the spidery seeds and added sequins and gold glitter. It synthesises well now and is ready for final touches.

Here is the final result