Altered Silver - project_f_w

F&W : Sponge-wipe background

noreply@blogspirit.com (Silver) — Tue, 20 Mar 2007 23:15:00 -0500

Here's a quick and cool background technique.

This spread was painted with acrylic paints in yellow, red-orange and reddish brown, in that order. For each color, while the dollop of paint from the tube was wet, it was spread and wiped with a dry craft sponge. Each color was allowed to dry to the touch before the next color was applied.

(Blog note: Alive and well, but I've been engulfed in…

F&W : Finish Line

noreply@blogspirit.com (Silver) — Fri, 12 Jan 2007 03:34:25 -0600

Just when I decided to join in with Artwords group which offers a topic each week to illustrate or creatively build upon, they came up with this one: Graffiti. Hm, well, I don't do graffiti in the dictionary sense of "drawing or writing on public property," and I don't even live in an area with an active graffiti base of that nature. So I thought I'd have to pass on this…

F&W : Watercolor Crayon

noreply@blogspirit.com (Silver) — Sat, 16 Dec 2006 23:10:00 -0600

When I got my first set of watercolor crayons (Lyra Aquacolor), I decorated quite a few spreads in the F&Ws as I experimented with the possibilities of the medium.

This one shows how delicate the colors can be. Just scribble on a bit of crayon, then brush out the pigment with water. I repeated the steps in various places to build up the color a little stronger.

For this spread, I…

F&W : Becoming "Special"

noreply@blogspirit.com (Silver) — Sun, 19 Nov 2006 10:55:00 -0600

When we last left off with this tale, this "Very Special" spread had been pasted and glazed and was having a severe identity crisis. Soon after, some more stuff was done to the poor thing. Nothing all that "special," so don't get excited, lol.

After an acquisition of some new rubber stamps, this spread seemed like a fine place to give them a "test run," because when you get new stamps,…

F&W: "Arts Project"

noreply@blogspirit.com (Silver) — Fri, 23 Dec 2005 08:20:00 -0600

This was a speedy collage, completed in a single afternoon. The spread already had a picture on the recto side, which I'd loosely brushed over with gesso. The entire spread was scrubbed with a burnt ochre wash.

I began by laying down torn magazine and tissue papers, then added some printed text, a graphic of a pair of eyes and some more tissue papers.

I covered the spread with a brown…

F&W : "Trust"

noreply@blogspirit.com (Silver) — Sat, 17 Dec 2005 08:10:00 -0600

I began this spread by looking through my rip file, a collection of images gleaned from magazines and books. Most of the stuff in my rip file was gathered about fifteen years ago. I keep promising myself I'll add the newer finds to it, but I just haven't gotten around to doing that yet. So when I went looking in the rip file a couple months ago, everything I found there…

F&W : National Watermelon Day

noreply@blogspirit.com (Silver) — Thu, 08 Dec 2005 13:15:20 -0600

In early September, I'd been buying an assortment of magazines for use in my just-begun gluebook, and in one of the kid's magazines, I found a text blurb saying "August 3 is National Watermelon Day." Ha! Never heard of this "holiday," but I really enjoy watermelon, so I thought it would make a cool F&W spread.

I wanted to keep the page simple in design. The spread was pre-prepared with gesso,…

F&W : Painted Tissue

noreply@blogspirit.com (Silver) — Tue, 06 Dec 2005 12:30:00 -0600

This was a simple little idea that could have big possibilities. I started by taping some wax paper to my drawing board, then taping a sheet of white tissue paper over that. (The wax paper acts as a barrier to prevent the tissue from adhering to the varnished board after getting wet.) Carefully (because tissue paper gets very fragile when wetted), I applied a layer of matte medium to the tissue…

F&W : "Live to Dream"

noreply@blogspirit.com (Silver) — Sun, 23 Oct 2005 01:05:00 -0500

Back in July, Jen Minnis posted (in the AlteredBooks Yahoo group) a link to her "Faceless" spread with a description of how she'd applied gesso over an outlined magazine image to achieve the interesting effect. It sounded like a cool technique to try out, so I searched a few magazines and catalogs until I found a picture of a lady who seemed like she might be lost in a personal reverie…

F&W : "F is not E"

noreply@blogspirit.com (Silver) — Sat, 22 Oct 2005 00:00:00 -0500

For this odd spread, I drew the letters in pencil, then colored them gently with crayons. To fill in the crayon, I went over the colored areas with a slightly different watercolor hue. The inner sections were colored with yellow-orange crayon followed by yellow watercolor, the letters with blue crayon then green watercolor, and the borders with purple crayon and blue watercolor. The variation in the hues makes a nice effect…