#95: My student asked, so I figured, Why not? Experimenting with Brusho

In March, one of my students who LOVES to buy art supplies, brought me some Brusho and asked me to play with it then show her how to use it.  I'd never heard of it so I did a little bit of research and began experimenting, using the beautiful jonquils just then blooming in our yard as my subject.

Brusho is a powder that comes in small containers. You're supposed to poke a hole into the top of the container so you can shake the powder out to put it on paper.  It's highly concentrated and very intense, so not much is needed.  It can be applied dry to dry paper which you then spray with water, or dry onto wet paper where it spreads on its own.  It spreads more or less, depending on how wet the paper is.  The first picture was done to give me a chance to understand a bit about how the Brusho reacts in general.  I discovered quickly that the colors are vibrant to the point of glaring. I like a bit more subtlety in my colors.

Below you can see the small jars of pigment and the start of a drawing.  I used pencil to draw the jonquils onto watercolor paper then wet the paper and sprinkled the appropriate color Brusho into the various areas.

 I then re-drew my drawing using a Micron 01 pen, a waterproof, very thin-line, permanent marker, to re-establish the flowers and foliage.

 I decided to try to deepen the background to make the jonquils stand out more, but decided it was too much. I didn't like the mess I'd made so I cut out the flowers and put them on a black background.
I wasn't so crazy about that either - the contrast was too stark - so I put it on a very different, weird background - the red and tan striped paper. I painted a plastic cup around the flowers and splashed a bit more Brusho around the flowers and called it done.

#95
Spring Flowers
Brusho, watercolor, collage, multimedia