I’ve been wanting to try my hand at gel medium transfers again. I came across a couple of images that Harold had laser copied for me from Flow Magazine a long time ago (years?) and as it happens a couple of cool ‘transfered’ projects started to appear in my Instagram feed. I was also commissioned a small mixed media piece… So, in my mind this became a clear case of 1 + 1 + 1!

I started by adhering the crocheted flowers to the canvas board with gel medium. Once that was dry, I covered everything with gesso. Then I took out some modeling paste and applied it to the canvas through a striped stencil. Once that was dry I adhered a couple of strips of washi tape and then I went over everything with a couple of coats of paint. Then, after the paint had dried, I applied my laser copied bird to the canvas with gel medium (good side down) and left that to dry for a couple of hours.

Once the gel medium was completely dry, I sprayed the paper with water, let it soak in for a bit and then rubbed the paper off the canvas with my fingers. I usually get rid of the last white residue by applying a little bit of gel medium on top of the exposed image, but I had heard of people that use Mod Podge for this part, so this time I used Mod Podge.

And then I went on from there: adding stencilling, more paint, adding in details with markers and pencil and finishing off with crystals, letter stickers and drops of india ink:

Materials used: canvas board, gel medium, crochet flowers, gesso, modelling paste, stencils, washi tape, paint, a laser copy of a bird image (Source: Flow Magazine), Mod Podge, a pencil, Uni Posca markers, india ink, Letraset Promarkers, Prima Marketing – Say it with Crystals, letter stickers.