Old Barn Painting

Welcome back to a new week! Wow, our first full week of January, 2021. As I’m typing this on the Saturday the 2nd, we’re having heavy wind gusts and rain – in other words, our typical ‘wet’ coast winter weather! I hope that your week is shaping up to be a good one. Today I’m sharing  a piece that I finished on the weekend, a beautiful old barn painting. The tutorial and outline sketch was provided by Teri Jones, a very talented artist in our Alcohol Ink Society members group.

OLD BARN PAINTING IN ALCOHOL INKS

What’s unique about this painting is the substrate. Instead of regular medium Yupo, it’s done on Translucent Yupo.  By placing the sketch underneath the translucent paper, it makes it easy to create a ‘no line’ painting. You don’t have to sketch onto your painting surface before you get started.  Here’s a look at Teri’s project (top) and my completed painting (bottom) in this photo.

I had frequent interruptions while working on this, so it was done in stages. The good thing about working in stages is that it allows for layering of the inks, and ensuring that an area is dry, before you start working in an adjacent area.  I have to learn to slow down when I paint. I’m so used to creating cards that come together quite quickly, that I tend to rush when I paint. Definitely not a good trait for this skill.

PAINTING DETAILS

As I said earlier, the base is Translucent Yupo. If you’ve used vellum paper before, this Yupo has a similar feel, but a bit more smooth. Depending on the ink colour, you can wipe it back to almost white, but it does tend to stain a bit.

The sky and trees are background trees are created first, by pouring the ink for the sky, and adding ink with a brush for the trees. The area for the barn is wiped back to white as best you can – because it’s going to be painted in, it’s not too drastic. Several colours and layers are used to created the weathered board look of the barn. Next is the bare tree, again wiping the background clean, then painting in layers for the tree bark. finally are the fence posts and wire, shadows and snow. The snow on the barn roof & tree branches is created with a white Posca paint pen.

I stayed mainly with the colours that Teri Jones used in her tutorial, simply because I actually have them! The colours are all Tim Holtz alcohol inks: Slate, Denim, Stonewashed, Botanical, Butterscotch, and Rust. Also needed is Alcohol Blending Solution, 99% isopropyl alcohol, a white Posca paint pen and several small brushes.

The photo above is a close up, so  you can see the different colours and layers. This was a fun tutorial to do!  I feel pretty good about how my painting turned out.

SUPPLIES

Using different substrates is fun to do, especially with alcohol inks. Each time, they react and move differently, so there’s always something new to learn. If you’d like to try this old barn painting, or anything else, I’ve listed my supplies for you, below.

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