Art Techniques: Adventures in Scrape Painting

 

Have you heard of Scrape Painting? It's something I've wanted to try, and finally did! It involves creating a mask of an image, then, as the name implies, using a tool like a squeegee or other flat surface to pull the paint down in a scraping motion. I'll share some lessons learned as we go along.

Supplies:

• Canvas or Flat Surface
• Masking Tape
• Craft Knife
• Assorted Acrylic Paints
• Paint Pens 

For my surface, I grabbed a canvas board I had in my stash. For my image, I downloaded one I found online, sized, printed, and cut out the outline. 

You can either use the canvas as is or paint a background. I wanted a background so I grabbed thse two colors and lightly covered the canvas. 

Once the canvas is dry, then it's time to make your mask, using...masking tape! Layer so each piece slightly overlaps. This avoids lines in your final image. 

Continue applying the masking tape until your surface is covered. To ensure good adhesion, I went over the masking tape with a scraping tool...eg the kind you use to apply vinyl. 

You can draw directly atop the masking tape or trace an image like the one I printed and cut out. I just used a Sharpie for this. 

Grab your X-acto or craft knife, and cut around the interior of your traced image. You want to remove the tape from the interior of your drawn or traced image. Once you have your whole image cut out, it's time to paint!

This is a total free-for-all with whichever colors you want to use. I just dripped these directly from the 2oz bottles, but you can also put the paints in smaller squeeze bottles or, as I plan to do, get some pointed tips to place directly on the paint bottles for cleaner application. Or not! For the next step you'll need a squeegee or a scraper wide enough for your image. I didn't get pics of this part but it's pretty straightforward. 

NOTE: Here's where I messed up! You should just scrape once from slightly above the top of your paints. I missed so I did it twice which overblended my paints, but I'm still good with things! Practice, right? 

As you can see, I got a little bleed on the paints. No worries. The next step will take care of things! 

I grabbed an Apple Barrel Paint Pen in black and went around the image to outline it. Then I took a gold paint pen and added dots and the needles on the cactus. 

I also grabbed my paint-dotting styluses and added some larger white dots in the background, and smaller ones on the cactus pads. 

Despite my goof with the double scrape, I'm still happy and can't wait to do another one of these! 

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