[A link party about art issues hosted by
Nicole of DVArtist, Art, Food and Everyday Things]
Last week I attended a half-day workshop
on creating multimedia art
featuring iridescent dragonflies.
We made two bookmarks and a small painting.
It was a lot of fun and I learned a lot
about art supplies which were new to me.
My pieces were sufficiently okay for a first effort,
so I'm happy enough with the results.
The background spatter was done by wetting the paper,
applying a light sprinkle of powdered watercolour paint
[Colourcraft Brusho Crystal Colours],
and then blotting it with a paper towel.
Next, we did some stencilling of botanical imagery
using acrylic gel paint [Artist's Loft Color Shift Acrylic Paint].
Gel paint is better than regular paint for stencilling,
because it does not "bleed under" the stencil's cutout design.
The final step was drawing stylized dragonflies and outlining them
with permanent (non-water-soluble) ink. Then we painted
the wings using two or three shades of special iridescent acrylic paint
[ARTME 20 Colors Iridescent Acrylic Paint].
Unfortunately, photos don't really do the iridescent paint justice --
you have to see the art in person so you can
wiggle it back and forth a bit in order to get
the full shimmery, light-reflecting colour effects.
So there's not much point, really, in using iridescent paint on
static artwork which will simply be framed and hung on the wall.
Iridescent paint is best, it seems to me, for small, hand-held
artworks such as bookmarks, tags or cards.
[Art and photos of art © Debra She Who Seeks, 2026]
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