Structure Paste Art Work Inspired By Christy Tomlinson’s Art Of Texture 21 Secrets Class

Christy’s class on 21 Secrets was all about using light modelling paste in your artwork to create wonderful textures. I have used modelling paste before in my artwork but never used it in my journal pages so it was nice to watch Christy’s videos on how she used it in hers.

I had run out of modelling paste and was too impatient to wait for my order to arrive so I went searching through my art supplies and came across a tube of Structure Paste which looked and smelled just like modelling paste so I used that instead.

These are the pieces I created inspired by Christy’s class:

Enchanted Dream Torn Tag: I used a Crafters Workshop stencil for the floral shape and punchinella for the border with structure paste, I randomly stamped the watercolour paper with a dotty background I had and added colour using various colours of inks and paints.

Butterfly Postcard: The butterflies are done with a stencil and coloured structure paste, I stamped the butterflies when they were dry with  a dotty background stamp. The postcard background was actually a leftover piece from Dina Wakelys class last week which I decided to use for this piece, I was going to paint over the background and make it less busy but decided to leave it for now because it kinda goes with the butterflies.

Indian Mandala Board: The mandala is a crafters workshop stencil, I love those designs, the squared border is taken from a strip of cooking mesh I had left over. I added colour using various inks and markers and took my inspiration from those bright Indian fabrics.

Great Oaks Board: The main tree is a crafters workshop stencil which I used the paste with and then added metallic colours using pens once it was dry. The leaves were also structure pasted using a fern leaf stencil repeatedly. I added colour to the main background by dripping over assorted shades of greens and yellows.

Encaustic Wax and  Reverse Structure Paste Tree: The tree is actually a reverse print of the same stencil I used to create the above tree; when I removed the stencil I noticed I had got a lot of paste on the actual backside of the plastic so instead of wiping it off the stencil I pressed it onto watercolour paper to create a reverse texture print.

Colour was added using encaustic waxes and artists inks dropped on the surface until I liked how it looked and acrylic paints. The white marks you can see in the lower part of the tree were created using a scraper tool which you normally use in scraper foil art to remove part of the wax to make patterns in it, they kinda remind me of seeds growing under the ground.