Friendly Plastic wall art

I signed up for a Friendly Plastic swap on CCSwaps. I decided to create a piece of wall art, so began with a 6 inch square stretched canvas. I drew some curvy lines in pencil, and painted dots of Xpandaprint between the lines (see left of pic below) then heated it with my heat gun to make it bubble up. I painted fine garnet gel around the Xpandaprint, and between the lines (see right of picture below).


Next, I painted the areas between the fine garnet gel and the canvas edges with coarse garnet gel.


I used a palette knife to add some gold mica flakes to the inner edges of the curvy lines.


When the garnet gels and mica flakes had dried, I filled the space between with clear granular gel (below).


I add some clear tar gel to the edges of some areas, then painted the fine garnet gel with Golden iridescent bronze fluid acrylic, and the coarse garnet gel with Golden fine iridescent gold. These colours will not show in the final piece, but they will add a sort of glow to the final colour.


Once the clear granular gel was dry, I added more dribbles of clear tar gel, and when that dried, I painted the whole piece with watered down Golden raw umber fluid acrylic paint. I then took some of the paint off with a damp paintbrush.


Once the canvas was dry, I added some aqua Treasure Gold to the clear tar gel and the central texture panel. It is a little brighter than the picture below shows, there is more contrast between the aqua and the background colour.


Finally, I dusted a Krafty Lady lizard mould with PearlEx, and made a lizards by melting gold coloured Friendly Plastic pieces into the mould. I pressed the melted plastic into the mould firmly with wet fingers (don't try it with dry fingers, it will stick to you and burn!) and kept wetting my fingers and pressing the plastic into the mould until I was happy that all the detail would be visible on the moulded piece. I dropped the mould and Friendly Plastic into the water, left it for a few moments, then unmoulded it under the water. I made a second lizard and toned the colour of the lizards down a little with aqua Treasure Gold.

Finally, I adhered the lizards to the canvas with gel medium. I hope Trish likes it!

Canvases

I've been playing with texture on canvas. I've learnt that working on two at a time is a good thing - while you are working on one, the other is drying and vice versa.

I added texture using a range of Golden products - coarse & fine garnet gel, light moulding paste, clear granular gel, pumice gel, fibre gel medium and clear tar gel dribbled on last - that's what makes the raised 'veins' you can see on both canvases. I am learning that as well as adding texture, each of these products takes the paint slightly differently, adding to the textured effects.


Once the canvases have all the textures added, and all the products have dried (several hours, leaving them overnight is easiest for impatient artists!), I added 2 thin coats of raw umber fluid acrylic paint. For the canvas above, I then added interference oxide violet and interference oxide green fluid acrylics. For the one below, I just dabbed a little bronze here and there. The final touch for the backgrounds was to add a little Treasure Gold to the high points - I used Amethyst on the canvas above, and Onyxite and Classic Gold on the one below.


The images on these canvases are made of Friendly Plastic - the top one was made using scraps in a mould I made from a milagro ornament, then given a rub of Treasure Gold Amethyst and highlighted with Classic Gold. The bottom canvas has a 'shrine' made from Perfect Paper and a rubber stamp, coloured in the same way as the background, with an art nouveau head made in a mould, coloured the same way as the background.