polished pigments

Remember this? I've been meaning to post a tutorial about it since I posted the teaser but needed to make a second lot of samples to photograph as I went. Finally, my friend Chris came for a play day and the natural light was good so here we go.
I learned the principals of this from Bernie Berlin in Melbourne this year. Polished pigments are beautiful pigments with mica particles that are made by Luminarte. They are in the same colours as twinkling H2Os but the difference is that you can mix them with different mediums for different effects. So you can layer them on top of each other which I have not been able to do with the watercolour H2Os. Luminarte have three mediums to use with the powders and I am using medium number 2 for paper.
You only need a little powder because the pigments are concentrated.

Add about the same ammount of medium or a bit more

I used a scrunched up piece of baking parchment to apply the paint randomly to watercolor paper. Leave a fair ammount of white space. This first layer is copper penny.

Second layer is sunflower gold

Third layer is poppy red. My favourite red. Very strong. Notice there is still a lot of white space.

The next step involves spritzing the paper and rubbing or sponging distress inks all over the paper. It can look disastrous but keep working the ink in then spritz again and remove the excess with kitchen towel.

In this example I used Mustard seed on the left, vintage photo in the middle and fired brick on the right to give you an idea of the different effects this step can have. Click on the image for more detail. Look at my gorgeous paper towel on the left. It is going to have to be used in a background later on.