Leonardo’s Apprentice- the world of Sarah Gladman

No, I am not talking about Warwick Kapper when I say thick and rich.

I AM talking about creating texture on your LO, though.

This week we are going to get messy – I mean REALLY MESSY. You need to go and get yourself a paintshirt or something to protect your clothes and your work area.

For this Technique, you need to get the following bits assembled before you start:
* Thick, heavy duty card (like the back of a sketch pad)
* tub of water
* acrylic paint
* oil pastels
* tissues
*PVA glue
* paintbrush

NB: before we start you need to mix up some PVA glue with some water (equal parts) in a small container to use on the tissues.
Step One:
Slightly dampen the card and drizzle some pva glue on it. Seperate the tissues so that they are really fine and then start layering them on the surface of the card. Use your paintbrush and the watered down glue mix to dab away at each tissue to make sure that they are all wet and stick to the base. Make sure some of them are a bit lumpy.

Step Two:
Keep layering the tissues until you start to form a very lumpy texture across the surface of the card. When you are happy with the eventual look of the texture, you need to lay it somewhere flat and leave it to DRY OVERNIGHT – or at least a for a long time to make sure that it dries right through each layer.

Step Three:
Once the layers are dry, paint over the surface of the entire card with a layer of paint (colour of your choice – I have used Red Oxide from Chromacryl which you can buy from the newsagency). LEAVE TO DRY for about an hour.

Step Four:
Once the first paint layer is dry, use your brush with a SMALL amount of paint over it and dry brush it across the tops of all the texture ridges on the tissues/card. I have used an opposing and dramatic colour like black so that you can see the difference. LEAVE TO DRY.

Step Four:
Once that final layer of paint is dry, you can start to attack to the texture with some oil pastels. Rub the pastels gently across the tops of the tissue ridges and then rub with your finger so that it smooths out. You don’t want to rub too hard as you will lose the effect of it showing on only the tops of the tissue ridges.

Step Five:
Start creating your “collage” over the top of the texture. I have stuck my photo down with PVA glue once I had cut it out. Then I surrounded the picture with some black oil pastel to make it stand out and then added paper/ embies etc. Now it’s just up to you to fine tune the picture/LO.