2015 #3 Ledger Book Portrait {by Clare Lloyd PA Signature Designer}

2015 Theme 3: Fresco Paints

Hi Clare Lloyd here tonight with a portrait I painted using the brand new limited addition paints by JOFY. I am going to share a few ideas about how to using translucent paint in your art work to add depth both of colour and texture.

Step One:
Working in an old ledger book which had a page already covered in black gesso, I was brave and brayered a rough face shape using Buff Fresco paint and then used some Jade over the background using a Mini Brayer. I did my favourite baby wipe technique to rub away some of the colour through a Crafters Workshop stencil called Mini Susanas Arrows, plus also scraped through with an old comb to get a scratch effect.

Step Two:
After sketching in some detail I added some more colour; Prawn for the hair, another layer of Buff on the face and some Jade for the eyes.

Step Three:

Now some ideas on how to use translucent colour over your art work...

Lips after a layer of Prawn and then a Snowflake highlight I added a layer of Cherry Red and did some simple sgriffito (scraped into wet paint with wooden end of a paintbrush). You will see the same effect using Limelight over Jade on the eyes and also with Tango on the hair.

Step Four:
To add some contrast shading to the face I used Southern Skies (a bright translucent), I applied this with my finger to be able to blend it really well. I did two layers of this shading in the end and used the left over paint on the background. 

Step Five:
The face needed to 'pop out' from the background a little more. So around the edge of the face, on the background, I added some Snowflake with a baby wipe and then rubbed through with a Crafters Workshop Mini Stones Divided stencil to wipe away some of the snowflake, leaving the stepping stones impression. 

And Finally: 
Of course there had to be some stamping and I used some of the fab new quotes, chevron elements from EEG02/EEG03 in black ink. 

I hope this project has helped to see how translucent paints can be used to enhance colour and texture in any project using Fresco Paints. Why not try that Sgriffito technique this week! 

Find my blog HERE and I am also on Instagram HERE.

Clare

What a great array of helpful tips Clare. I can only encourage people to have a go at faces, its so true, the more you do, the better you get, and often kooky faces have an unexpected quirky personality. It's probably better to try to restrain any expectation of what a face *should* look like. I've only recently realised, if you paint the skin in non-traditional skin tone face colours, like Clare has used the blues here, that there is less pressure for the face to conform to some kind of unrealistic perfection. I am really loving those faces that are painted in really bright lime greens, blues, purples, pinks etc rather than skin tones perfection we have seen lots of over recent years. So come on people, lets do kooky bright faces and throw caution to the wind, are you IN ??? Then show us what you can do in the challenge. ~Leandra

We would love you to join in with Challenge #3:Paint. If you are inspired by any of our guests who blog with us over these 2 weeks, then please join in and show us your painterly exploits HERE.

All links go in the draw to win a £50 voucher to spend on products of your choice from the PaperArtsy online store. The Paint link will close 17:00 (London Time) Sunday Feb 21st, winner will be announced 2 hours later at 19:00.