Acrylic Backgrounds with a Brayer

When doing backgrounds, take a look at your art supplies with a fresh perspective and try using them in different ways. This is one type of creative experiment to expand your work. In the altered catalog above, I created cool backgrounds using Speedball thick-bodied acrylics and a 2" Speedball brayer (the type of ink and brayer used in block printing).

The first background above is named Vivid. I added hand carved eraser stamps, a bit of ephemera, and random passes with the brayer in saturated thick-bodied acrylics. Used found items to stamp with gesso. I found that blotting the excess paint makes paint from earlier layers visible, a unique effect.

In the second set, I painted over another page to come up with the top background "Plaid." I'd originally stenciled "MOVE FORWARD" within an acrylic border but I wanted to start fresh. Using a piece of heavy paper as a guide, I made rough horizontal and vertical lines in various colors with the brayer. It took on a look of plaid yet retained the stenciled words. Acrylics dry FAST, so you can layer them quickly with minimal blending.

More from Daisy Yellow!

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• Art Journaling 101
• Bubbled Brayer Backgrounds
• Guide to Using Acrylic Paints is a great resource

Comments

[iHanna]

Yummy!