I started with a large sheet of heavily embossed paper, with a swooping but formal machine made swirling pattern. I liked it, but … it was disturbingly regular & repetitive. So of course I wanted to mess with that! Above, on the top row, you see draft #1 at left, done with watercolors, then draft #2 with the addition of a few layers of soft pastels and various clear artists’ mediums.
And in the second row are two digitally manipulated versions of draft #2.
I have found things to do with clear flexible cutting mats! I have made lamp shades, but there are many other options.
Clear translucent flexible cutting mats are readily available and affordable. You can apply paint, acrylic medium, art papers, and digital transparencies on this material. With a little care and planning, the cutting mat can be transformed into a great lamp shade, and the design will glow when lit. If you want to feature a design, photo, or artwork, use translucent paint or print to a transparency. Or apply opaque papers or paint if you just want to see the artwork when the lamp is unlit.
The lamps above are not new, but I don’t think I have ever featured them in my blog. It is an interesting functional way to display my work, although it does take some trial and error to get the translucency and color saturation to work. I wanted to enjoy the designs when the lamp was unlit and when lit, because I am greedy that way :-)!
I applied my art to clear flexible cutting mats to make the shades. The lamp bases came from thrift stores, and are probably bases from broken lava lamps.
I have used this technique to create wall sconce shades that feature photo portraits of community members; these are installed in our community common house.
I was limited by the mat sizes, but 18″x24″ and 20″x30″ mats are available now, which provides me with more options. I am currently working on a different home improvement project that will also feature my art over flexible cutting board material. I found larger sizes available from ChopChop Food Service and from Norpro.
This is a really handy material: stiff but flexible and easy to cut. It is very durable, the sconce shades have been in place for about 10 years.
It was a surprise to me that I did not find anything when I Googled “things to do with flexible cutting mats” or “things to do with flexible cutting boards”! Nothing on YouTube either. Someone else must have found a creative use for these affordable & readily available mats.
1) purchase special black art board,
2) sketch with pastel sticks,
3) scan,
4) repeat #2 &3 four times,
5) draw w/metallic ink & paint pens,
6) scan,
7) add colored pencil,
8) repeat #5-7 several? times,
9) print color-adjusted, previously drawn scanned fantasy heron,
10) position & glue heron,
11) scan,
12) work on heron w/colored pencils & adjust background,
13) scan,
14) repeat #12-13,
15) hang in RW Common House,
16) lose for 3 weeks,
17) find returned to my CH cubby, 18) add dappled shadows,
19) scan,
20) glue on fine pieces of embroidery threads, & touch up with colored pencil after glue dries,
21) scan & publish here.
BTW, I left out a few steps for the sake of brevity!
Not quite the same: lots of (different) fine tuning with subtle and not so subtle color and line changes!
These are variations on a digital foil, each with considerable additional coloring by hand. The foiled image was differently adjusted for brightness, saturation & contrast for printing. Then I put in several hours of further work, taking each of the above images in slightly different directions. This is easier to see in the larger view: just select & move through the “lightbox” slideshow.
