Hey Gang,
Tonight I needed to put together a list of things that have been
helpful & not so helpful in regards to our black velvet paintings.I sent it
off to somebody that might be interested in trying and or submitting something
for the show. I thought that I'd pass this on to you so if anybody is looking
for some current info on the subject. Also feel free to edit, modify, add to,
expand upon, correct, etc. .....
Thanks,
Loren
Black Velvet Painting Tips
Glad to see some interest in
our attempts at trying to get some velvet paintings done.
Well , so far here's what
seems to be working.....
1) You want to start with a
silk or cotton based velvet material, one of the other artists found that using
synthetic velvet doesn't accept paint very well, it wants to slip off of the
surface. I read that silk velvet works good , we haven't tried it though, it's
pretty expensive too. (Oh the cotton velvet was around $10.00/ yd.)
2) Obviously you want to
stretch it over frame bars, they were a couple of dollars each at an art
store,- found out that when you paint over the surface of the velvet that is in
contact with the frame bars you get a 'line' in your paint, so we are now
putting a piece of acid free foam core board cut just a little bit smaller that
the diameter of the stretcher bars- in between the velvet and the stretcher
bars.
3) You can either lay out
your painting with a white pastel pencil (wouldn't use an oil pastel I don't
think), Or what seems to work well is use a large enough sheet of heavy paper
and do your layout drawing on that, take a sharp needle like poker ( kind of
like the sharp end of a drawing compass), poke holes in your paper every 3/8
inch or so tracing your drawing. Tape your drawing to your stretched velvet -
don't let any of the velvet be exposed - take a piece of softer white pastel
chalk & rub it over your tracing - you can work it in a little bit with
your finger. Remove the excess white pastel dust. Then remove your stencil
overlay, and your ready to paint. If you didn't cover over the whole surface of
your canvas you will now see why you should have covered the whole surface -
there will be a noticeable whitish area from the excess dust, most of this can
be brushed (swept?) out but it's better /easier just to avoid having to deal
with this.
4) Painting - Acrylic paints
seem to work the best. Way ahead of time plan where your darkest areas are
going to be, and in my friends words, " consider those areas already
completed". In the areas with color a try a dry brush with plenty of paint
in it. When the paint dries a lot of the color will fade out, so you may need
to build up layers of paint until when it is dry you have the intensity you are
looking for. If you make a mistake and colorize an area that you wanted to have
be very darkly shadowed, you may not
get very good results if you try to bring that area 'back to black'
using black paint. It reflects too much light to be mistaken for the black of
the black velvet. Another artist on an art forum said that he had heard that
black velvet is one of the least reflective materials that there are. Also at
times you may need to scrub your colors in to get them consistent with adjacent
areas. It doesn't seem to work very well using a wet on wet or a dry on wet
combination. If you do make a mistake with your paint a lot of the paint can be
lifted back off of the surface of the velvet with a clean brush if you catch it
right away.
5) It might be helpful if
the subject matter that you choose to paint has a lot of contrast between the
lights & darks, Also if you are using a smaller 'canvas' it is pretty hard
to get a lot of small detail in your picture. If you want finer details to pop
out, you might consider working on a larger 'canvas'. Also you might want to be
doubly careful of getting paint on your hand or finger un-noticed and then
touching that area of your hand on your painting, It's a lot easier to fix on a
regular canvas than on black velvet.
That's about all I can think
of right now. If you try this out & discover anything that you can add
please pass it along this way, we can use all the help we can get, there
doesn't seem to be much written on the subject. One of the next things I'd like
to find out is if it's okay to Scotch Guard some of my work ( the piece I'm
making into a throw pillow) Well hope this all helps. Good luck & let me
know if you would like to enter a piece in our show.
Thank's for your interest
Loren Smedberg
http://web.mac.com/lorensmedberg/iweb/Loren%27s%20Gallery/Introduction%20.html