Getting Down to Business

An upcoming excursion to Los Angeles necesitated the making of new business cards. New cards, to me, means painting paper for printing on.

 

Day 1

 I gathered a pile of stencils, some still in their packaging. (My stash is forever growing).

 My go to "kit" of card stock, gesso, cheap brush, brayer, scrapers, plate/palette, bubble wrap and a paper plate holder.

I started by stenciling gesso through the plate creating a sunburst pattern.

 I worked with several papers at a time often burnishing a second sheet over a freshly stenciled paper. Extra gesso transfers to the top sheet and the papers dry faster. The design on the second sheet is often my favorite as it's more uneven and distressed looking.

A finished gessoed paper. Why use gesso for the first layer? As later layers of paint are added, the gessoed pattern absorbs less paint creating a variation in the value of the color.

Day 2-Color

My art business, Studio Artology, is represented with a color palette of turquoise blue, lime green and bright red. I divided a set of papers to be painted in each color. First up, greens. I decided to stencil and stamp greens over a set of papers. If you're not familiar with my passion for dots, you're seeing it now. Stencils, bubble wrap and discarded die cut leftovers were used for the green sheets.

 A red sheet, close-up. A slew of paints and inks were used for the final layers. It's exciting watching the papers develop with each spritz and wipe of the brush. This one had me worried with too much white showing through for printing and readable type.

  The growing stacks on the drying rack. I didn't want to leave and have to wait until the next day to see how the colors turned out. Patience isn't a well developed virtue of mine.

 

 Day 3

Forget the coffee! I headed to the drying rack the first thing the next morning. I wanted to swim in the depth of the colors.

One problem. Painted papers create wrinkled papers. Not ideal for running through a printer.

 Say, "hello" to my tried and true solution. Ironing the paper. 

The finished sheets.

The final steps included running the papers through the printer, cutting the cards to size and experiencing a few thrills of excitement.

The business cards were well received and definitely unique and representative of my art making. 

Marissa