Sgraffito is an art term describing a technique used e.g in plaster, pottery, glass or paint. Basically one or several layers of the medium are revealed by scratching into the top surface. The term comes from the Italian word sgraffiare and means to scratch. Not sure if that will help me with my next Italian vacation but hey… you never know ;)
Now why is that something that might interest me? It is cool because you can create TEXTURE- yum yum! Do you need to have more reasons?
You actually saw some stuff already where I used the sgraffito technique- like on this piece from a post here playing with the Derwent Artbars. I used a tool that Derwent especially made for this, called the scraper.
But there is more…Scratching into still wet acrylic paint – Texture heaven. You can use all kinds of tools for it – like a plastic fork, the end of your brush, palette knifes…ah there are many many possibilities.
It is fun to add some sgraffito marks to your backgrounds or art journal pages – Let’s do a quick background video – I have a list of all supplies used below :) :
I love to use Liquitex Heavy Body Paint with the Sgraffito techniques, because they are – as the name might give it away ;) – heavy bodied paint.
I already have something in mind where I will use this background as a foundation – you will see it soon.
And if you want to learn more about acrylic paint techniques and a LOT of background techniques with them…
well….;) I can recommend my Über*Media Acrylic Paint Workshop. You don’t have to have Heavy Body Acrylic Paints….but I will show you how you can overcome that problem of having none anyway so you can still do sgraffito. But hey- Sgraffito is only one of more than a 100 techniques in that workshop :)
I just love Acrylic Paint :)
Hope you enjoyed the little video :)
Nat
Related articles
- For the Love of Acrylic Paint (nathaliesstudio.com)
- On a Paint Media High (nathaliesstudio.com)
- Weckruf (Wake-Up Call) or…A FAST Forward Making off a Canvas (nathaliesstudio.com)
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