Surface Treatment Workshop - week 3

a few weeks ago my sister and I decided to work our way through the prompts

covered in the book "The Surface Treatment Workshop"

and already we are on week 3 which explores using aluminium foil ...

the sort of foil most of us have in our kitchen drawer

most of the prompts include embossing patterns into the foil first

before experimenting with colouring the foil

for the embossing part of the exercise I mainly used stencils

and textured surfaces found in my studio such as corrugated card and blister packs

the samples below were embossed with a seedhead stencil

and then coloured with acrylic inks

I only bought the three mixing colours of turquoise, magenta and yellow

and blended them on the foil to create these tones

the inks were quite runny so they don't work with all stencils

but they did sit quite nicely on this one which had enclosed patterns

below is another piece of foil textured with corrugated card, blister pack and leaf stencil

I applied black shoe polish to this one which achieved a lovely "vintage" tone as it dried

I rather like these tones and mixed patterns

in the sample below I embossed the foil with circles from a stencil

added a layer of pva glue, then, after the glue had dried I painted a seascape with acrylics

to help the drying process along I heated it with a heat gun which created tiny little texture bubbles

I noticed this was the pva glue bubbling and also the white acrylic, but not the blues

you can see the embossed circles coming through the paint

the close up detail below looks like seagulls and sea foam

(you have to use your imagination a little bit ...)

this is another sample below of the same process but without using the heat gun

and painting into the pva glue while it was still wet

the paint blended with the pva to create a feeling of movement in the seascape

(I definitely prefer this version)

this is the whole scene below ... a landscape

and a detail of the seascape with white sand beach, rolling waves and wintery sky

it's all I had time for this week as I also worked on covering my sketchbook

but I do have a couple more samples in progress which I hope to finish at the weekend

these are ... drawing and mark making on the reverse of the foil instead of embossing

and a 3D piece where I stuck some limpet shells down on a base

covered with aluminium foil to get the shell textures coming through

then I painted the shells white and just need to work more colours into the shells

***

in week 4 we are exploring mark making with masking tape

week 1 - stamping/printing

week 2 - stencils

week 3 - aluminium foil

week 4 - masking tape

my sister didn't enjoy using the foil this week but she did create a lovely original sample using

foil wrappers from stock cubes which she painted with acrylics and oil pastels x