In Assemblage Art of the Common Loon, pt. 1 I discussed how I wanted some loon feathers in my art but I’d need to find a way to color them. My first thought was to try to make my own alcohol ink, using a method I’d seen on a Youtube video using ink pens and rubbing alcohol.
Thanks to family members who know, I collect weird stuff, I have a lot of old pens that don’t work anymore. I’d use the ones with black ink. Problem: they don’t write anymore so how can I tell what color the ink is?
I put some alcohol into a container and started snipping pens. I ended up with dark blue ink in the container and on my hands and on the kitchen floor and on my white stove. What was I thinking?!! I cleaned up my mess as best as I could and decided to try black acrylic paint. I was happily surprised at the results. It worked very well.
After painting my feathers black, I noticed that the feathers were darker than the picture of my loons. It took the attention away from the image. I could solve this problem by either increasing the contrast in my birds or by making the feathers less black. I ended up doing both, printing another copy of the birds and repainting the feathers with some dark gray acrylic paint. I put some white dots on the feathers after they were dry and put a black wash of acrylic paint on my green frog.
To prepare my flat canvas board, I put on several thin layers of sealer. Then I painted it with several shades of brown which looked “icky.” I ended up putting a piece of brown muslin over it, adhering it with a thick layer of fabric mod podge and extra tacky glue around the edges. After it was dry, I trimmed it with a sharp craft knife. I liked that background much better! Part 3 coming up.