Mixing acrylic paints with a palette knife

I have a set of plastic palette knifes which I bought years ago. I haven't used them much - whenever I tried to use them I had the impression that I was doing it the wrong way, and so I stopped. In addition to that I have been using acrylic inks mostly, and mixing them was fine whenever I used the brush to mix. 

However a few days ago I was looking at my collection of acrylic paint tubes (all kind of brands, some heavy body, some soft body, some craft paints) and thought that maybe using a palette knife for color mixing and flattening out the blob of paint could help me with doing a detailed painting even with acrylic tube paints. I watched some videos on YouTube, and then I took my heart into my hands andpa tried it myself. You can see the result in the painting above: The various shades of grey were done with mixing a grey craft paint with a white no namer by using a paöette knife. Of course I need a lot more practice, but I feel that I am on the right way.

In addition to that I tried another new thing: I added some strokes with watercolor brush pens on top of the acrylic painting. 

 

Markers and felt pens

After a month long break from painting with alcohol markers I decided to grab my markers again and continue with painting i an abstract style. I tried one new thing however: instead of shading with inktense pencils I used watersoluble felt pens to add some dimension to the shapes. I kept on using mixed media paper and noticed that I had to be very quick with my waterbrush to dissolve the marks of the felt pens (in the end I had the felt pen in one hand and the waterbrush in the other hand). 

Regarding the quality of the alcohol markers I have to admit that I am not that satisfied with the Einhorn Markers I bought at TEDI. One marker actually went dry almost on the spot. Yes, they were cheap. But I also use Decotime markers from ACTION. These are also very cheap, but up to now I had no problem whatsoever with them!
 

Going wild with colours and stabilo pens

Stabilo 68 pens can be found anywhere you can buy office stuff. They are considered kids' stuff - the paint can be easily washed out of childrens' clothes and is said to be absolutely not harmful. However these felt pens can be used like watercolour brush pens (they even can be bought with brushes now!). They are dyebased, but a little mark is enough to go for a long way if you wet them with a brush. 

 

Purple snowflake

This painting was my first kind of commission. I'd already done that snowflake, but with a completely different background design and a complete different colour palette. I'd made a card out of it and showed the card to a nice person in the restaurant which I use to frequent quite often. Sie bought it and said that she would like another one but with other colours.

Well, I actually did another one. This one is done with a range of media: watercolour brush pens, liquid watercolours and some alcoholbased markers, and of course, a white gel pen in the very end of the creative process. Today I went to the drugstore and had two cards printed out with this design.

Blue and Purple Abstract

This painting has been done mostly with liquid watercolours, using the colours purple and night from Colorex, pebeo. Then I added some finishing touches with brushpen watercolours, using the ecoline brush pens and the tombow brushpens.