New Website, New Blog

Well, this has been a great spot to share artistic techniques, new paintings, new projects and other artistic endeavors, but I've recently built a new website and have a blog there I'm going to be using instead of this one. If you'd like to continue to see my paintings, please visit:

http://janajohnsonartwork.com/

and if you like to continue reading my artist blog, here's that address:

http://janajohnsonartwork.com/blog/

Change is good!

Snowflake cards and heart cards - More Monotypes!

For our holiday cards this year, my husband Brad and I played with the Gel Plate again, this time using snowflake stencils we cut out of vinyl and mylar. It was so much fun, we made extra to sell at Art In The Valley Gallery.

Here are a few photos of the process, along with some of the snowflake cards:

Above: Replenishing the paint on the palette.

Now I'm rolling the paint onto the gel plate.

Getting ready to print using the snowflake pieces. 

Pressing firmly to pull the print and transfer the paint onto previously printed background.

As you can see they're not always successful! This particular print didn't pull up all the paint from the corner, and one of the snowflakes wasn't very crisp. Each print run was an experiment and the possibility of a bad print is occasionally hard to avoid. Luckily, acrylic paint can be layered multiple times and if a print doesn't meet our high standards (ha!) we could layer more paint and print a new background or more snowflakes once the paint had dried. 

As you can see, each is unique! 

This month I've been making monotype heart cards and prints using stencils I cut out of mylar. I also made letter stencils from scans of my own handwriting, using my husband's laser cutter. As a sign artist, he has some pretty cool tools out in his shop! 

Some of these cards are available to purchase at my Etsy site and I hope to have some at Art In the Valley later this week. 

Here's one that you can purchase right here! Of course, the watermark won't be on the card that you purchase, and it will arrive with a white envelope. Each is an original acrylic painting, suitable for framing. 

Heart Card "3"  4.25 x 5.5 inches

$7.00 + $1.00 shipping

Let me know if you have any questions! I'm really enjoying all the textural effects from this new-to-me method of creating artwork.