Spatter pop art - leave your perfection at the door

This picture inspired the title of this blog post. Kind of a Warhol meets Pollock but encompassing Dali. It's messy and imperfect but oh so fun to make! I first learned this technique from doing a workshop done by Audrey at Art Specially 2015. Also it is such a simple technique, you can whip out several of these in minutes! Beware though, you might end up with ink spatters everywhere ;)

You would need your craft sheet, card stock or water color paper (or anything that is absorbent enough) distress stains, mini misters, paint brushes, heat tool and a stamp you love. Portrait stamps work well for doing pop art, but any stamp would do really. But don't take a stamp with too much detail. You won't see that detail here anyway. This Dali stamp is by Carmen's Veranda and they have a lot of wonderful portrait stamps here.

So the process is quite simple: first you swipe down a range of colors from your distress stains on your craft sheet, I used 3 blue colors (faded jeans, broken china and salty ocean) and then spray it down with mini misters. Have your stack of card stock ready, and dab your stamp gently in the pool of ink on your craft sheet. Then make an impression on your card stock.Set it aside to dry and make as many impressions as you can/want to with the color puddle on your craft sheet.

Once you have made a few impressions, take your heat tool and dry them all. Then you can do a couple of things: re-mist the color puddle or refresh with new ink from the distress stains. I did both, First re-misted and swiped my round brush in the puddle and tapped the excess ink over the image. I heat dried the image again. I also took peeled paint reinker and another color dabbed it on the craft sheet and swiped my other brush in that and tapped it over the dried image. I liked the bit of color contrast that spatter added. Go on until you are satisfied with the spatter/splatter effect and heat dry it for one last time. Now you have a bunch of these images ready to be worked further upon, or just leave them as they are! I quite like the simplicity of the prints. But I also wanted a more 'finished' piece to 'tip in' my art journal later (my altered marbled book pages are also 'tip-ins'). I took one of the bigger card stocks I had and kept one side blank to add a quote.

I used a combination of alphabet rubber stamps which I got from the HEMA. I stamped down the quote

Have no fear of perfection, you will never reach it - Salvador Dali

I also added some color to the letters with a turquoise sharpie. And this is what the finished piece looks like.

I hope this inspires you to create some spatter pop art yourself. Would love to see if you do, share a link below :)

Thanks for stopping by!

namaste