Experimenting with: Viva Inka Gold Metallic Rub and Luminarte Artist Pigments

We found some new colorful pigments and inks to play with! First is the Inka Gold Metallic Rub by Viva Colour, which really looks like shoe polish in the container, and it's rubbed on nearly the same way. You can't see it in this photo but it's really shiny and quite a nice gold. I also tried two colors of the Primary Elements artist pigments by Luminarte. The pigments come in a small jar, and it's powdery and you add it to medium - I added it to matte gel medium. The dark orange color at the top and around the blue circles is 'Ginger Peach' and the blue circles are 'Bolivian Blue' - they really are very shimmery and lovely.

I used watercolor and gouache for most of the underlying colors, plus a little bit of green and yellow Golden Fluid Acrylics for the green, then added some block printing inks (Speedball) with a brayer and stencils - we also got two new stencils, including the large circles one that you can see on the left side over the yellow and orange, and a hexagon one on the right side over the yellow. Some shimmery Irridescent Pearl Golden Fluid Acrylics on bubble wrap pressed over the middle added a wonderful shine to the whole situation.

And this is a little piece I did recently when showing a friend how to play around with paints. We were originally making a house in the middle with trees on either side, a stormy sky above, and a river in front.

Mine became quite a bit abstract in the process and I added some circles at the end. I love color and there really is no wrong way to make art. There are certain techniques and 'rules' you can follow if you're trying to accomplish a certain thing, but otherwise, it's wonderful to be able to add color wherever you want on the paper, and make shapes and you can always add a layer of white gesso to cover up something you don't like and go again! I put my name on there with a Montana Acrylic Paint Marker, which writes nicely over dried paint.