Tea-stained Sketchbook

Ever since we used the technique to make a pirate map in Grade 4, I've been a huge fan of tea-staining. Not only does it look gorgeous, something about the process gives the paper just a little bit more tooth too.

I've been wanting to do a collection of small illustrations on tea-stained paper, and figured it would be best to stain all the paper at once, so I was ready to go whenever inspiration strikes. 98 cups of tea later, I had myself an entire tea-stained sketchbook. It means the backs of the pages look a bit drab, but that doesn't matter at all.

(Oh, have I mentioned I like pocketwatches?)

I just grabbed a cheap sketchbook, so I wasn't worried about destroying it (I may have been swayed by the cute string enclosure too). The plan is to wander around our yard every other day to find something to draw - seedpods, leaves, flowers, insects... that kind of thing. I've already started a "to draw" collection of found bits and pieces. Call it back-up for a rainy day.

I won't have time to start it for about 6 weeks, but I'm looking forward to it! A regular walk around the garden might even help me notice when the plants require that thing they need - I've been told it's called watering.

Fixes and Freak outs

Ok, I'm a little bit late with this one, but it's still Thursday in some parts of the world!

So, after this artwork ended up being damaged upon it's return to me, I decided that the only way to try to fix it was to add another levelling layer over the top of the whole damaged area, to try to hide the bubble-wrap texture. This is how it looked when I'd first layed it down, and plenty of people thought that I'd painted smoke over her to make it look like she was a genie emerging from her teapot 'bottle!'

The levelling medium dries clear though, and I used the same product that I always have, and have never had a problem with it, until this time. I left it to dry overnight, but we had our coldest night of the year for our area (0.6ºC) and that was apparently too cold for the medium to cure properly without disaster:

This is the point at which I taught the studio pup some new words. The cracks were so deep and sharp, that it looked like they'd cracked all the way down through the paint. Luckily, luckily, luckily this proved to just be an illusion created by the shadows on the cracks, and I've been able to 'fill' them with more levelling medium, and they've all but disappeared. The bubblewrap texture that I was trying to fix in the first place is completley gone.

Now, I want to add some extra details and change a few little areas that have been bugging me. I won't be able to get to this for quite a while, as I've got a few other pieces I need to finish first, but I'm anxious to get to it! I'm also going to be testing some alternative levelling mediums, so I can hopefully avoid this whole awful scenario in the future!

THIS LITTLE TEAPOT

The show opening is happening right now!

Here's my artwork for it:

16x20" Acrylic on custom textured birch panel, and teapot!

HUGE thanks to Bec Murphy for including me :)