Thread by @illustrasuns, Fellow artists drop your favorite tips & tricks you’ve learned for your [...]

Fellow artists drop your favorite tips & tricks you’ve learned for your medium(s)! Let’s help each other out & elevate the game

I’ll start! For acrylic painting I’ve learned that adding a layer of gesso to a canvas / wood slice helps get rid of the texture & makes blending and subsequent layers go on smoother. Also adding a layer of white to a colored background you’re painting on will make the colors pop

To make prints I take a photo of my painting using my iPhone or dslr & the edit the colors in Lightroom and then digitize the painting and get rid of unwanted textures or add details in procreate to produce a digital version to make a high quality print

I use catprint and gicleetoday for my print vendors and get my artwork printed on heavy cardstock from catprint and archival matte paper from gicleetoday. Both companies send u free sample packs of their paper but it took like 2 weeks for it to arrive

For shipping, pirateship is a GODSEND. They provide discounted usps shipping labels & give you the option to add your customers email so they can track the package themselves. It’s free to use and has saved me so much time and money!!

Ok now onto resin: I’m still new at this but I’ve learned a few things so far! I like to paint on my resin trays and learned that you can remove acrylic paint from cured resin using an alcohol wipe if you made a mistake. Here’s a video on how!

I also like to make resin trays with handles and found that adding them 3-4 hours after I pour is the perfect time to do so since the resin has already started to harden but isn’t too hard that you can’t stick the handle in. I waited 5-6 hours once and it was almost too hard

I also like to make trays in layers for extra dimension. In the first layer of resin I use alcohol ink for the coloring & add some gold flakes. Once it cures I’ll paint on it then add another layer of resin once the paint dries then add pressed flowers & more gold & sparkles 1/2

2/2 to that layer then let it cure and then add 1 more layer to seal it all together to get rid of any textures or bumps coming from the flowers. This is why it takes me 3-4 days to make 1 tray!

Ok back to acrylic painting

for painting skin tones I like to stick with 1 base color & for shading I add a darker brown instead of using black bc I’ve found that shadows look more realistic & soft that way. In reality black shadows only really are casted in harsh lighting

Ok back to acrylic painting for painting skin tones I like to stick with 1 base color & for shading I add a darker brown instead of using black bc I’ve found that shadows look more realistic & soft that way. In reality black shadows only really are casted in harsh lighting

Ok back to resin LOL I started looking into how to work with resin bc I wanted to coat my wood alices with it but then went down a YouTube rabbithole. @artsymadwoman has AMAZING videos and basically taught me all I needed to know to begin