Reverse Art X Art Journey

 

Reverse art is a concept I've recently discovered... I bought some felt tips that bleed through the paper MEGA bad *like it'll go on to whatever is underneath the paper too... be that your leg lol so you need to put something you don't mind getting stained underneath* but the bleed through looks hella cool when you turn over the pieces. For some reason I actually prefer the bleed through side, it's a lot smoother and creates a unique vibe. The bleed through side could then be re-outlined creating an illustration. I use felt tips for creating cut out ephemera which are singular things like individual aliens, planets and souls etc coloured in and then cut out ready to be used in your journals. I find it therapeutic using felt tips for this as it saves a lot of time, anyways the reverse method I discovered is a new way to do the cut out ephemera.

I did some research on Youtube to see if reverse art was already a thing and most people do reverse colouring which is where the background is already painted with colours and you have to draw on top what you can see. I used to do this in my early work a lot... this is a great automatic drawing exercise to get those creative energies flowing. What you turn the shapes into sometimes might not make sense logically together or look totally proportioned correctly but individually they will represent something and creates a unique piece full of character. 

I recently bought a magical scratch pad to release my inner child and have some fun creating, if you don't know what a scratch pad is it's where there's colour underneath the black so when you scratch a design into it it appears all rainbow which contrasts beautifully with the black. I had an idea to create paintings similar to the scratch pad in aesthetics but not scratched out and through experimentation I had the idea to pair this idea with the reverse colouring method seen on Youtube...I call this the reverse painting method. Hear me out, so you've outlined your shapes turned them into something THEN paint black around everything not outlined so you've funky filled illustrations contrasting with the black. You then can add a white outline in paint pen and even take it one step further and experiment with covering the black with different mediums such as oil pastels, gouache, watercolour or even glitter glue/paint. 

SO that's how I do methods of reverse art, the first one a totally new concept for me that gets my brain working differently, the second is something I already knew of but didn't know what the method was called as it was something that I naturally did. The third reverse painting is a concept i'm super excited about and feeling inspired to create recently. I painted a bunch of recycled material backgrounds *receipts and junk mail were stuck to the paper and then painted on top of using colours I was initially drawn to*. Once i'd painted the recycled material backgrounds which i'd previously been using to create ephemera, but I wanted to try out the reverse painting technique on them and it turned out SICKKKK! 

I don't know if anyone else has tried a similar method to the reverse painting but it's fun to create and you should give it a go because it's mega simple yet effective! 

What do you think of reverse art?

Till next time,

Stevie x