Golden Gesso Compared to Golden Absorbent Ground

Many people use gesso in their art journals and on canvas to prepare the substrates for paint and ink. However, many people are not aware of the effect of absorbent ground. This product does the opposite of gesso-whatever you put on top absorbs into your substrate. You may not want this effect with your paint but you may want it with your ink sprays which tend to lose their vibrancy over gesso. Here is my tutorial comparing the two products.

Judikins!

I had the pleasure a few weeks ago of spending time with Judy Watanabe of Judikins at the Heirloom Rubber Stamp convention in Novi! This is the third year I have had the opportunity to learn from her demos at her product booth. She is gracious as well as creative and I absolutely LOVE her inking and stamping techniques. One product that definitely needs mentioning is her MicroGlaze. MicroGlaze is a product that protects your paper art from water. You take a bit of it and rub it on to your paper then buff to a shine. Most use it after working with ink but I wanted to use it after coloring with my Prismacolor pencils. I colored a cute digital stamp bug but wanted to color the background with shimmer spray. So I applied the MicroGlaze with a fine-tipped paint brush and my fingers on the bug only. Afterwards I sprayed the image with Glimmer Mist and low and behold my image resisted the water-based spray! It also did not disturb my coloring with the Prismacolor pencils. Here are pics of the process and a photo of me and Judy.

Artist Trading Cards

Here is the video slideshow of my latest atcs. They came as a random burst of creativity-I completely let go and just went with whatever happened. I used various inking techniques and products mostly from Ranger Ink. I hope you like them.