August Mystery Technique - Aboriginal Sand Art

Oh it was so much fun to see where you thought I might be going with this technique.  Most of you guessed correctly that the medium I used was Ranger's Enamel Accents but one person guessed exactly what I did with it and that person was Neil....

Neil said...

Hi, I'll go with the enamels too. At first I thought you just dripped as the centre ones are so smooth but then the outer ones are rougher so I think that either the back end of a pen or brush was used. I would guess that starting with the centre you start doing dots in concentric circles and in the end you have a page full of a lovely aboriginal style design!

August 4, 2011 6:08 PM

Congrats Neil!!!

  (I will add your Enamel Accents to your charm envie.)

I was very inspired by a photograph I saw recently of an old Aboriginal Sand Art Painting and decided to check it out a bit more.  I found a site that talked about this ancient art form - Dreamtimes Aboriginal Art.    Traditionally it's made from organic materials found in a give area but now many of these artists work with acrylic paints as well.

After reading a bit more about it and seeing additional examples I knew I wanted to try my hand at it.  I made up my own little story about life's paths and how each path we choose can lead us down a different road but in the end all of our choices are connected.  Yeah, I know a bit sappy...

anyway, here is what I created....

The first thing I did was to draw my desired pattern onto a piece of cardstock.  For the example I used white cardstock just to show what my initial design started out as.

 

I then began adding large and small dots with both the black and white Enamel Accents.

To vary the size of the dots I applied more or less pressure to the bottle.  I also varied the space between the dots depending on which layer I was on to add more interest.

As far as the design goes this is where the real fun begins. There is no right or wrong, you simply make dots...big ones, small ones, fat dots, flat dots, whatever works!  While this does take a bit of time I found it to be very relaxing.  You will need to let your design dry for a few hours.  Remember it will be dry to the touch but it will take a bit longer for the accents to cure.   The large dot everyone thought was a brad was actually a dot that hadn't cured completely when I placed another card on top....it ended up transferring the texture from the paper to the dot.

So now it's your turn....

feel like creating your own bit of Sand Art?

Monday I will share a variation on this technique that I created using rubber stamps.