Having attended a recent paste-papers workshop and had such a good two days I was reminded of the fun of just ‘having a go’ and letting colours appear on paper with a little less planning than I usually do.  So I turned up at Primrose Park, with a bunch of others, to be guided through a session on (semi-random) mark-making on paper using acrylic paint.

I’ve loads of acrylics, both good and poorer quality.  For this session I quickly realised that – thank heavens – I’d taken along my lovely Matisse flow & regular paints, which turned out to be exactly what our tutor, Diana, was using.

The first half of the day revolved around applying paint with rollers onto plastic sheets, water spraying, allowing a little time to semi-dry, over-laying more colour and water-spray and pressing dampened paper onto the surface.

It got super wet.

Over time there was more water and less paint evident on our plastic sheets.

First prints were heavy with colour but these became more subtle.

Water ensured runs across the paper as it was lifted from the surface, water marks remained, colours merged …..  It was very freeing!

I used a rubber comb to create some vague patterns.

We moved on to working on a gelli plate and as I had some rubber stamps I applied those to the painted surface and then did a paper ‘lift’.

I made 2 x 2 sets so that if I decide to use these as book covers I’ve enough for both the front and back.

The day went too quickly, as always when having fun, but since then I’ve made a small offset double concertina book using one of the papers above.