Using The Bottom End of Your Paint Tube To Create Marks in Abstract Art

The joy of teaching art is learning about so many new mark making techniques from your students. Yes, as the instructor, I am always sharing the tricks of the trade with my students in my classes. But, I must say, as I stroll around the room checking on student progress I discover quite a lot of cool methods that students share with me. Case in point is the novel approach of scraping wet paint with the bottom end of an acrylic paint tube. Look at the lovely textures and marks (right side of image) thats swiping with the end of the tube of paint makes. Thanks to Jill Pasanen for this tip.

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

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. 

Mark Making With A Small Remnant of Woven Chair Caning

 In a recent class I taught at The West Hartford art League on making your own mark making tools, one of my students took a small piece of woven chair caning and attached it to a chop stick with tape and dipped the small remnant of caning into black ink and created these wonderful marks on paper. The trick is to pivot the caning in many directions to get a variety of varied black lines. For more information on upcoming workshops and classes, visit http://www.cdiannezweig.com/workshops/