Tribal Art

Once back home from the workshop, I showed off my creations to my husband and this was his remark about this tribal art,” This is extraordinary!” :) Hmmm...maybe. Had it cracked properly, I would have agreed with him.

This was our session on working with crackle medium and shilpkar. Our tutor gave us clear instructions on how to work with the crackle medium.

• Use big flat brush for this project
• Do not use water
• 1^st coat of paint is the one that shows through the cracks
• Then apply crackle medium, wait for it to be tacky (not too dry, not too wet)
• Apply 2^nd coat of contrasting paint making sure not to paint on the same area twice (lest the paint should get removed) and maintain the direction of strokes

I did get all of them in my head, but was a little too creative! She’d specifically asked us to paint the 2^nd coat with acrylic colours and I used acrylic pearl colours instead! Thought I could give an extra shine to my work. But little did I know that the effect wouldn’t come out well when pearl colours are used. Since it didn’t come out well like what the other’s got, she suggested doing an additional coat of crackle medium on top and another coat of brown when tacky. This is the end result. You can still slightly make out the cracks.

Making the tribal face with shilpkar was easy since I’d already done a frame with m-seal. The technique was the same. The face did come out well with all jewellery and details done, but I kept cribbing about how I’d ruined the background :( I’ve anyways bought all necessary items to try this out again. Hope I get it right the next time..