PaperArtst Blog - Topic 12 - Eyes

Hi everyone, at the PaperArtsy Blog this fortnight the theme is 'eyes' and I had a project featured last week which you can be found here. I didn't have an idea for my project initially, I knew that the plain petal shape from Ellen Vargo's stamp set EV009 was eye shaped so that was my starting point. As soon as the stamp set arrived and I could see the size of the petal stamp the idea came of the Eye of Horus (also known as a wedjat eye) as I knew I could build pattern around it and I've seen lots of variations of this symbol of protection in the British Museum, in artworks etc., it's popular for tattoos as well.

It was satisfying to be able to use all the stamps in the set, once I started I could see the possibilities and one of the pattern circles, the one with the radiating lines made sense to be used as the iris of the eye. As always though I started with the background, it somehow gets the creative juices flowing. 

As you'll see from the main project photo, once dry my card bent a little due to using a bit of wet glue with the hessian sheet but I can pop it under something heavy to sort that out later. I really like the texture the hessian adds and it fits the theme of the card. There's sparkle and shine in there as well with gold sparkle embossing powder and gold paint, they all help to add interest.

Blue Oyster, Blue Lagoon, Bora Bora, Beach Hut, and Gold were my colour choices in Fresco Finish Chalk Acrylics with Terracotta and Royal Blood Infusions.

Smoothy Heavyweight A4 White Stamping Card is my substrate, it holds up to the paint, infusions and brayering without the surface degrading. 

The stamp press came out so that I could repeat stamp the main feature of the card. As you can see I'm down to a 12" area of desk by this point! :D

I've stamped all the patterned petals over one of my backgrounds and they slotted together very nicely on the (dirty :D) stamp block to cover the background quickly.

Here you can see the layers of the eye. I stamped the plain petal again onto the turquoise background, drew a freehand border around it and cut it out. I stamped the radiating pattern circle over the white petal for iris and pupil and then glued them together.

I continued building a border pattern around the eye after sticking it to the gold background. The patterns are created freehand with a black paint pen and coloured with alcohol markers for ease of colouring the tiny parts of the patterns. A nice pearlescent effect is achieved because the gold paint beneath shows through the transparent markers. The transparent paints in the range could also be used for this step.

The flourish parts under the eye and the blue eyebrow over the eye were freehand cut from the blue background pieces and outlined with black paint pen. 

The stamped areas are coloured with markers outlined and highlighted with paint pen. I added pastel pencil under the eyelid area as well although a true eye of Horus would be completely void of shading in this area and there would be no iris just the black pupil. For some definition I've added black watercolour pen around the eye and the sticker sentiments pulled out with a damp brush.

I doodled quite a bit in white, I find it relaxing and I've added more shimmer with some glitter paper and some perfect pearls around the black border using Seth Apters mini stamp EM44 and Versamark ink, I also used the stamp on the gold background with Blue Oyster paint for more texture.

It's very satisfying to make something completely different from a stamp intended for something else, so this was a very enjoyable make for me.

Back soon,
Chris x