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Last night was my first Mystery Art Material stream on Picarto . Bought art materials telling me what he was getting, and I didn't know what I would be working on or with until he handed them to me. The first challenge was wood stains on plywood panels. The panels are 6" x 12" and were used in their store-bought condition. The panels weren't sanded or sealed in any fashion, which might have made things easier.

Now I've used wood stains when doing, well, woodworking. However this was the first time I tried to create art using the material. I had three colors of stain. Espresso, American Walnut, and Light Walnut. For applicators I had a selection of cheap nylon brushes since Caerdwyn had no idea what the stain would do to brushes.

Fortunately the plywood allowed me to sketch out very rough drawings of Applejack. However since the wood was unsealed or prepped the stain wanted to bleed. Prepping the wood with some straight Odorless Mineral Spirits helped some and permitted an opportunity lift off some of the stain where it bled.
After the first break we decided to use some colored pencil to define some details in art. That's where the red in AJ's mane band comes from. This had the unexpected advantage in that the colored pencil acted as a resist which helped to keep further applications of stain from bleeding, and once dry the pigment from the pencil was surprisingly durable and permanent. Also colored pencil could be applied over stain. So in roughly an hour and a half I created these 2 images. Then this morning I sprayed a Verathin satin sealer over both pieces in 4 light coats.

It's an interesting technique and worked better than I expected. I might consider doing this again in the future. Opinions on the concept from my Watchers?
Edit. The red border around the images is a digital effect I added when compiling the images this morning.

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Posted previously at: 2018-07-22T19:52:21