Saturday, January 10, 2009

"A" is for Alcohol


The Yahoo Surfacing group is running a year-long challenge, a little something to keep us trying out new ideas and techniques. Every other week, we experiment with something starting with a letter of the alphabet. For this first one, I chose "alcohol" as in rubbing alcohol which when applied to wet paint is suppose to do "interesting" things. My first trial shown above used silk painted with Dye-na-flow paint. I dipped a cotton swab in alcohol and dabbed it on the wet paint on the left and swiped it through the wet paint on the right. It did the "interesting" thing, which is to repel the paint pigment, creating a halo effect.


I was not as successful with the cotton sample where the alcohol was sprayed on, although when I switched to a marbling color, it spread and haloed. Click on the picture for a larger view and to read the explanation printed on it.


I tried a third sample using a different base paint - Versatex. I couldn't see that the alcohol had any effect on the paint dropped or brushed on it.

I think this is one effect I will leave to others. I liked what it did on the silk but at the moment, I'm not painting on silk or have a clear vision of how I would use this effect.

1 comment:

Nora and James McDowell said...

If one is an acrylic painter, rather than a fibre artist, alcohol will melt the acrylic and therefore can be used to subtract things.
I imagine which paint "melted" was related to its chemical make-up.
Nora