Splish, splash, splosh

I've been playing with Brusho today, making cards for Open Studio and experimenting with the new shimmer sprays that ColourCraft have produced...and I've been having a lot of fun. I started out doing some shaving foam dyeing, then thickened some Brusho and did some printing, and finally ended up doing a bit of experimental mark making on some Evolon. That, as you can imagine, took up a fair amount of time, probably the most time I've spent in the Little Green Shed for a while, now.

I was particularly interested by the combination of printing and spray shimmer...as you can probably guess from the pictures, above. It's amazing how different the images look, yet they are clearly all based on the same print from a linocut I made some time ago. All that variety, just by carefully spraying. I did discover that it's a good idea to let one layer dry before the next layer gets added; otherwise, you end up with little pools of mica, which is pretty, but not quite the effect I was looking for. Fortunately, none of the pooling was too dramatic, and I'm intending to mount these prints, so some less painterly marks will disappear. I like the way you can vary the intensity of the spray, by moving it different distances away from the surface of the paper. I've never been a fan of glitter (glitz, yes, glitter, no), but this gives a lovely, subtle shine to the piece. I've already tried it on Evolon, and it looks good on that, too.

I was struck by the comment Dave made, about it being interesting that cutting pieces down doesn't change the meaning, for me at least. Thinking about it some more, I realised that for me, it's like a final distillation of the piece... I take out areas which seem in some way superfluous to the needs of the piece. So it says what I want it to say, only more intensely. As the Scots say, 'Guid gear, sma' buk', or good things come in little packages.