Paper, Paint and Multi-Medium

Last night, I had an opportunity to participate in a class that took me a little outside my comfort zone. I attended a class taught by the oh so talented Stephanie Ackerman in Heber, UT. It was called 52 card pickup and she gave us each a deck of cards and taught us how to turn those cards into individual works of art.

First of all, let me just say that Stephanie is a great teacher. She is generous, sincere and very encouraging. And she's pretty funny too.  I have found that some of the best artists I have met are also the most selfless and that was true of Stephanie.

I started out tentatively. I always do when I play with multi medium. But as the evening progressed and with some encouragement from Stephanie, I threw caution to the wind (well, somewhat). I had a pretty thick coating of multi-medium and various colors of paint on my fingers by the time the night was done. But you know what? I think I did pretty well. Here are a few of the 12 that I worked on.

 

I couldn't resist using the "half off her rocker" phrase. I feel that way so often.

This house card turned out to be one of my favorites. It was the last one I did because I was contemplating chucking this card in the garbage. It started out with red paint but because I was being so tentative, it looked like I had pricked my finger and bled all over it. Stephanie told me to work the paint on with my fingers so I did and then it just looked like a red mess so I set it aside. After I had done my other prepped cards, I figured I had nothing to lose so I just started layering with paint and paper and ended up with something I'm pretty proud of. I think of cards like these as happy accidents--it didn't start out the way I intended but it turned out well in the end.

You know what was easiest for me? The shading. Using a Tim Holtz distress marker, I would shade around the various shapes and then blend it with a tiny bit of multi medium and my finger. I joked that it was because it was ink so I was back in my element.

I'm not finished. I still need to add words to some of these. I still have 40 more cards in my deck to create with. But this was really fun. I can't wait to play some more.