Monday
Aug292011
Finger Painted Art Journal Backgrounds
Mon, August 29, 2011 at 01:44PM 
Before I go further, it's been brought to my attention by an astute reader that I should absolutely not play with artist quality paints with my fingers due to the carcinogenic nature of certain pigments. {here's my solution to achieve the same look without fingers touching paints}. Pop over to Comfortable Shoes Studio or this post by Mark Golden for more info.
9x12" art journal backgrounds
Paint something with your fingers today!
Painted these with my fingers mostly, gobbing on a bunch of tubed acrylic paint, smearing around, and playing with a very sharp corn cob holder to scratch texture into the watercolor paper. I added cinnamon on the first page (my younger daughter's idea) and the page smells yummy.
8 Comments Tweet | Email Article | Print Article | Share Article | Permalink | in abstract, acrylic, backgrounds, painting
Reader Comments (8)
Awwww---that looks so fun!!! I haven't really fingerpainted in a a long time. I use my fingers here and there on paintings, but not all-out finger painting!
Jill
Nice! I like using my fingers sometimes too- lots of fun!
I don't want to be the negative Nellie here, with these lovely pages you painted, but this is something I'm seeing a lot of people do - use their fingers to paint. When you say you used tubed acrylic paint, then I'm assuming that you used either a student grade paint or artist grade paint? Either way, a lot of those paints contain heavy metals (for the pigments - like Cobalt Teal by Golden), which are carcinogenic. Less Herger did a post about this here: http://www.comfortableshoesstudio.com/2010/07/health-and-safety-in-the-art-room.html.
Just a word to the wise, in case you weren't aware of the hazards.
Kristina - this is not negative-nellie-ness, this is real life and i had NO idea and appreciate your concern and pointing me in the direction of less's post. yes these are artist grade (golden tubed acrylics) i rarely paint with my fingers but now i won't any more!
I updated the post with a link to the post at Comfortable Shoes Studio.
Tammy
So glad you read her post!! I hadn't even thought of it until I read her post, and then I had the same reaction you did: "Not doing that again!". I didn't want to come across all lecturey, but it's important to know that even acrylic paints can be toxic and/or hazardous.
If you still want to finger paint...wear surgical gloves! The joy is finding ways TO do things, not reasons NOT to do them!!
Find the joy, make the joy!!
Hap, Not to worry, I'm not the type to "stop" but rather to improvise. I've found that colour shapers work lovely for creating fingery-painty acrylic creations.
Tammy
Yay for Tammy! ANOTHER way TO do it rather than NOT! Two thumbs up for you...only because that's the maximum I have ...or it would have been THREE thumbs up!!