Gut Art with Mystele -

Part of the fun of taking Mystele's Gut Art class is viewing all the videos on her techniques for making all kinds of fun things. Last weekend I spent my time putting together a fun acrylic painted fabric wall hanging. Starting with some colorful cotton, I free quilted a bunch of cotton scraps and ran my sewing machine stitches round and round to make a textured surface of cotton.
Next was free application of craft paints using a palette knife. Letting each layer of color dry before adding more, kept it from becoming muddy in appearance and the colors stayed true. Once that was done, I had a very busy background, so I softened it with some gesso, and highlighted it with Liquitex Basics gold. Using a palette knife allowed the gold to ride the bumps made by my sewing and it was just the highlight I wanted.
Gazing at this background, I "saw" a face and "pulled it out" Mystele style with a water soluble graphite pencil. All that was needed after that was some softening with a black Portfolio water soluble oil pastel crayon to define the features of her face. A little lime green and purple finished the most important features and I made the skin of her face glow with a glaze of the gold acrylic.
This video shows "Maya" in her completed state. I also had a small adventure upon completion and just had to add some embroidered elements to the final piece.
This was so much fun to do! And, for once in my life I didn't worry about the "hand" of the fabric being stiff.