Wanderlust 2022 - weeks thirty-six to forty-two - Inks

I thoroughly enjoyed exploring Inks in Wanderlust.  We began with Distress inks, making a background and then using tea bags and photos to create linked images, showing elements of our personalities.  I chose to put a photo of my Granny and my Mum in the teabags and a stamped image of a woman to represent me - Granny gave me a love of nature and gardening and Mum gave me a love of music.  

We used acrylic inks for our next piece. We made lots of patterns using inks and blowing through straws. we then tried to bring out something we could see in the pattern.  I eventually decided I could see part of a face, so brought it out using watercolour pencils.  I think it is quite enigmatic!

Acrylic ink painted onto feathers was our next lesson.  I made envelopes and placed some family photos in them - my Mum and Dad on the left and my Granny and her family on the right with a small photo of Dad as a little boy in the middle. I have used these before, but they are great photos.

Another inky background.  This page took a totally different turn from how I thought it would be.  It ended up being a memory of Scruffy, our cat who we lost at the end of August.   I painted Scruffy in acrylic ink using a photo for reference.  The autumnal colours and leaves just seemed to work with the theme.  The two ghostly cats in the corner represent the other two who are buried in the garden, Gonga and Ginny.    

This was about using loose brush strokes, holding the brush right at the end and Acrylic ink. It is vaguely based on a self portrait but doesn't really look like me, although that wasn't the idea anyway.  Not one of my favourites, but an interesting process - letting go of perfectionism!

Much more to my liking was this layered page, using spray inks, stamps, stencils and a magazine focal image.  I like the feeling of movement with the leaves and the woman's hair. This also included a useful lesson on colour theory, so that we wouldn't make 'muddy' colours (unless we wanted to use neutrals, of course).

The last in the inks section was using alcohol inks and stencils.  I used Yupo paper (synthetic paper which doesn't absorb the ink) for the image on the left and glossy card for the one on the right.  I wasn't happy with the tissue paper image on the right as the tissue paper didn't fade into the image as it should have done. Possibly this was to do with the alcohol background.  So, I had another go... 

I kept the original which is now hidden under the flap on the right. This time I used alcohol inks and stencils on my gel plate.  I think this worked much better and the tissue paper faded as it should do.

The last theme for this year is Paper and Fabrics, which should be good.