Misty Faces

I have limited space currently 

so I am still exploring 

working on tea bags
I recently put up a new experiment 

and was asked about process

It begins with a tea bag

dried with side edges removed

on a silicon baking sheet

I draw a face with sumi e ink

this particular one

this time

I apply white egg tempera

(egg yolk, mixed with titanium dioxide white powdered pigment}

and end up with 2 faces

they are left to dry

the one on the left has been flipped over 

so the image is now facing down

I apply traditional gesso to the tea bag

then a piece of paper

which also has gesso applied

then another tea bag and another layer of gesso

so the sandwich consists of 2 tea bags and 1 paper filler 

and 3 layers of traditional gesso

they are then left to dry completely

before carefully peeling them off the baking sheet

I do not use silicon baking paper as you

 end up with a very wrinkly result

The flipped image 

The unflipped image is a lot mistier

This is after beeswax has been applied

flipped image

unflipped image

'Calista'

 is available in my Etsy Shop

and this is the original 

image

If you have any questions please leave a comment

 

Teabags and Dye

I have been heating up my jars of stored dye

to help prevent unwanted growths

and in the process I dribbled some on my silicon baking sheet

I also dyed 2 types of linen thread

one is a linen paper

and once the dyes on the sheet were dry I made some 

teabag 'canvases'

I am super pleased

with the results

They are supposed to be bases 

for painting on top of

But at this stage I just want to frame them as is

Tea Bags plus

As a follow on from the post about teabags

I have continued to experiment

These lovelies are done the same except 

in one batch I had not cleaned the silicon sheet

and this gave me some lovely marks 

So I decided to do that deliberately

using avocado ink 

modified with washing soda

some of the marks seen here are

from a little of the ink mixed with egg yolk 

on the silicon sheet itself and

the darker redder ones 

are from the ink dripped in between the layers

I love the end look

But the question is can I paint on them!!!!

Not yet, these two are on the plainer bases

The First two faces for 2020

 221 Vanessa

222 Irene

Both in egg tempera using only bone black, titanium white, indigo blue and yellow ochre.