I admit I love to create little rituals around my arts
practice.
Currently one of these is preparing teabags as a painting
surface.
I am not a tea drinker; my husband performs that duty for
me.
Two per morning during the week and 3 or more on weekends
An ongoing giving resource.
There is a small bowl beside the kettle in the tea making
area, this ensures the teabags don’t go in the bin, all part of my make it easy
strategy.
I pull the tags off and place them on another bowl that sits
in the window to dry out.
I collect them up till I have 16 teabags, then I am ready to
make a batch
To begin I prepare my traditional gesso* go here for a
tutorial
This is not an acrylic gesso, which more properly is an acrylic
ground
But a rabbit skin glue and calcium carbonate mix used while
warm
1 level tsp of rabbit skin glue granules is enough for at least 2 batches
silicon mat
I lay out a sheet of soft light paper, that a friend found
for me in an op shop, (it came from between the sheets of a photo album), onto
my silicon mat which I can clean and reuse
I place a tea bag onto it and brush with the gesso smoothing out from the centre, it will penetrate through and glue it to the bottom sheet. I then place on a second teabag, and brush on more gesso to glue it to the teabag below.
I repeat these steps 7 more times and then leave them to
dry.
When they are dry on the top surface, I peel the whole sheet
off
and flip it over to help the underside dry
When completely dry I tear them into individual pieces and
trim the edges.
The teabags are now ready to use as a paint surface.
Handmade watercolour, natural pigment
egg tempera, natural pigment
frozen gesso
