Surface Treatment Workshop - week 18

I'm really enjoying this weekly project, exploring techniques and products that are both familiar and unfamiliar.  When it's a technique that I am used to I try to take it in a different direction, other times the products are familiar but the technique is new.  This happened for me with ventilation tape.  I am used to this stuff being around at home as my better half was a heating and ventilation design engineer ... but using the stuff in art ... there's a thought!!!

Ventilation tape is also known as duct tape or insulation tape and is a heavy duty silver foil that comes on a roll.  It is adhesive and is very, very sticky when the paper backing is removed.  Before removing the paper backing, the prompts suggested etching a design onto the tape with a pencil, but I found a needle achieved a sharper design.

I etched small designs onto the tape, cut the tape into strips, peeled off the backing paper and applied the tape to a background.  It is still possible to work more etched design at this stage, so I added a little more pattern.

Then, using acrylics, I painted over the etched texture, first with Cornish colours and then a pearl white over the top.  The acrylics, I found, had to be applied almost neat for them to stay on the foil.

I have to say ... I really enjoyed creating this with no agenda.

Next, I decided to explore etching a little more using a sharp needle for a finer line and inspired by some old bottles and Carn pottery on my studio windowsill.  I peeled the backing off and applied the tape to some tags first before etching and then coloured the bottles with turquoise acrylic ink to compare to acrylic paint.  The tape took the ink better but took a real age to dry completely (overnight).

I wanted to see if I could get a "rubbing" from the design on the right.  It was very fine, so I had some difficulty with it.  Despite trying with pencils, oil pastels, soft chalk pastels and crayon on tissue paper my image was very faint ...

Lastly, this is a useful one for creating texture in artwork ... etching marks and lines on the ventilation tape, then scrunching up to create lots of texture, then painting with acrylics.  I used pearl, blue and paynes grey.  It still has the backing paper on it which can be used to help it adhere to art work, although this was compromised in the wet (painting) stage.  I would recommend using additional glue to fix.  I like that the etched lines are still visible despite the severe scrunching I gave it.  No doubt, this will be useful in painting or collage in the future.

So that was a quick post on ventilation tape.  I did enjoy this week's technique and will be using it in my work.  Next up is "embossing" which I have already done in readiness for Wednesday's post.  Yes, "Workshop Wednesday" will actually arrive on Wednesday this week!

Have a great week ahead everyone ... play lots! x