Being Busy

I've been busy.  For weeks.  I have several big and small sheets of paper spread out everywhere.  I have been playing off and on with stencils and sprays.  I've lost track of which sprays I used when.  I only know the ones in the last week have been Colorwash sprays.  Before that, it was mostly watered down stamp pad reinkers in spray bottles. 

At some point though, all that work-in-progress starts to look like a lot of clutter, so I grabbed all the big sheets and started tearing them down.  I'm eventually going to end up with a 5 x 5 inch book of some kind.  I still have some papers that are drying and need to be painted on the reverse sides.  But for now, here's what I've been up to.

Before:

After: 

My problem with playing with stencils and sprays is that I don't know when to stop.  While one paper is drying, I think that I might as well spray a couple more while I'm standing there!  Then when all those dry, I have to spray the backs.  And then I start some more fronts while the backs are drying.  And on and on.

Once I had a fair number of papers going, I decided to give them all a "wash" made of Fluid Acrylics (a few drops of Transparent Red Oxide and one or two drops of Raw Umber) mixed with water.  Believe it or not, all of the papers here were brushed with that same wash.  They all turned out different because most of the sprays were not waterproof and ran when the wash was brushed over them.  It made for some very interesting colors. 

So I have quite a few pages now.  Loving the yummy colors.

I also have a few extra papers (graph paper and kraft paper) where I either blotted the wet stencils or sprayed lightly on as I went along.

Someone stop me!