LUISE HEINZL’S COFFEE AND BRUSHO FLOWERS
Another stash-busting project after a fashion. I have a pile of my hubby’s incomplete or reject watercolour paintings which I rescued from the bin several years ago. I told him he should paint on the back but if not, please could he recycle them in my direction? I have used a lot of these papers and the quality is good. Sometimes, after cutting them up, I have used the fronts which have unrecognisable painted elements on them in abstract form which make for interesting starting points for backgrounds etc., or I can use the backs.
Luise Heinzl’s holiday in England
Luise Heinzl, a mixed media junk journal artist whom I follow on YouTube, has recently taken a trip from Germany to England to spend time with a British friend, and she has uploaded a playlist of videos of the art they did together. Obviously when travelling, she took minimal supplies with her, and they managed extremely well with what they had, making art out of doors at pub tables or in her friend’s garden. It’s been fun to watch.
Brushos and Infusions
One project they did was to paint simple flower shapes with coffee and sprinkle on Brusho powders while the coffee was still wet. This is a technique I have never thought of doing, and which should give my aged Brushos a new lease of life!
Many years ago I went halves with a friend on a set of these powder paints. I never really liked them because the colours are a bit crude and bright for my taste. When I later discovered Infusions by PaperArtsy, I much preferred these which have a subtle blend of colours with added walnut fragments which give a gorgeous grungey brown speckled effect once they are dry.
Both media come in powder form and you can either sprinkle them onto wet media, or sprinkle them onto a dry surface and spritz them with water. Either way, the effect is an explosion of colour from each tiny grain, which is dramatic and fun. They are extremely uncontrollable to use which is half the fun – they are definitely not media for those who like precision in their art!
Every now and then I like to have a “splashing about in the studio” session, getting ink-stained fingers, and on this occasion, such a mess on the floor that I had to bring the mop upstairs to clean up!
Coffee and Brusho flowers
The effect of the wet coffee was to dull the colours of the Brushos, and the results were gorgeous. I knew I had to try this. I took out a few sheets of the recycled watercolour paper, and began by drawing some flower centres with a waterproof ink pen.
Later these centres had to be redone and enlarged as they got lost under the layers of colour, but they served as a good starting point.
I painted the petals roughly and very loosely with the coffee. I don’t think I’d made this cheap instant coffee strong enough because it was pretty pale. I think I need to use better coffee for art!
The blue flowers
Then I sprinkled on some turquoise Brushos, but of course the blue reacted with the yellowy-brown of the coffee and turned green. Later I added some true blue and got more of the effect I wanted.
You can see quite a few of the granules untouched by the water. Some of the purple had migrated onto the blue flowers sheet from the one next to it but I wasn’t too concerned about that – it all adds to the interest.
The purple flowers
I got a bit carried away with these and added too much coffee and two much of the Brushos, and also too much water spritzing to activate it, and it all began to merge into a bit of a shapeless mess, but every art project goes through an ugly phase and one just has to press on, confident in the knowledge that all will be well in the end. I do love the effect of how the colour moves on the surface, though.
The orange, red and yellow flowers
I had got a bit better at this by the time I moved onto the largest sheet and did three rows of flowers in these warm colours.
Drying the sheets
You can see how much the colour has moved and migrated in most of these, with some gorgeous patterns in places. Also, on the purple and blue ones, the initial ink pen flower centres had disappeared.
Outlining for definition
Out came the black marker pen again and I drew the petal shapes loosely. I also added some definition to the centres with a fine white acrylic marker, and gave the petals a few white veins.
The outlining didn’t stand out very well so I went over it with a fine black Posca acrylic pen which made a difference.
Cutting out the flowers
I fussy-cut all the flowers. When I came to the warm-coloured ones, I decided to leave them attached to each other in rows, in case I wanted to make belly bands or page edges out of them – they can always be separated if need be.
Detail shots of the completed flowers
The offcuts
I am very much into saving the negative spaces left after die-cutting, fussy cutting or machine cutting these days. Nothing needs go to waste!
Luise layered her flowers by cutting smaller petals form the offcuts and sticking them down. I have not yet done anything with my offcuts and may have other plans for them. None of the pieces are very large anyway. For now, I am pleased with my flowers being single-layered.
Mop-up sheets
As always with a wet and messy project like this, there is always a lot of mopping up to do. I hate to waste good materials, and keeping my sheets of kitchen paper in colour groups and continuing to use them to mop up until they are sufficiently covered, I have another resource for making art!
A very satisfactory outcome
This was an extremely interesting and fun project to work on, and I am delighted to have found a use at last for my Brushos. They are so old that some of them had congealed into a solid lump at the bottom of the pot, but poking at them I was able to break them up a bit, and produce enough powder to make the project. The colours were not affected.
If one doesn’t have these powdered paints, it is always possible to add texture to the flowers, if not additional colour, with salt, or by sprinkling on instant coffee grounds. I have yet to try this, and it could yield interesting results if one wanted a monochrome brown effect. Painting with coffee, using a large soft round brush, adds a lot of liquid to the surface (watercolour paper is best) and it tends to pool, where it dries darker, giving automatic shading. This is dead easy to do!
I suppose one could also add a bit of colour if one shaved bits off watercolour pencils and sprinkled them on, but the colour might not be as intense as the Brushos. I also have yet to try doing this technique with Infusions.
You could also add a 3-D centre to each flower, using the stamens you can buy for paper flower making, or brads, gems, eyelets, buttons… anything that comes to mind, and of course one could add as many layers of petals as one wanted. The possibilities are endless. You also don’t have to restrict yourself to flowers – any shape would work, and I am sure you could make gorgeous butterflies and dragonflies, or abstract shapes. You could probably die-cut the paper too. You could add stencilling, stamping, doodles… One is only limited by one’s imagination.
From this basic interpretation of the technique, I now have a nice stash of interesting artsy flowers to add to any number of projects!
