O.K. confession time..I have been working on an abstract painting for way too many months. Each time I return to this painting I declare that on that particular day, if I resolve just a few more problem areas that my work will be finished! Sometimes I even take pictures of work in progress and look at it on my cell phone in the evening when I am home. I often convince myself that the next time I return to my studio... bingo I will just need to add a little of this or that and I'll be done. But even with some tinkering, that "finish" bell may not ring as I expected. How does one know when an abstract painting is done? One of my mentors said in a critique session "that a painting is not finished...it just stops in interesting places". So with that comment in mind, I'm returning to my studio and I am going to have a talk with my painting and ask it what would make you more interesting?

Rubbing Paper Over An Old Credit Card to Create Texture In Mixed Media Art

January 22, 2017 by Dianne Zweig

It is amazing how you can create so many interesting marks and textures with common ordinary objects and household materials such as an old plastic credit card. One of my students in my Wednesday WHAL Mark making class introduced me to this credit card technique. You begin by placing paper (in this case we were using waxed deli paper called Kabnet) over an old credit card and making a rubbing with a pencil or black crayon. Plastic credit cards can also be used as "a palette knife" to spread paint on paper or canvas. You can also scrape into a painted paper with the edge of the credit card to create nice lines and marks.