A creepy inking session!

Yes i know, slightly odd i know. :)

It's been a while since i used my beloved alcohol inks on anything, so i decided to finish a project i started a couple of months ago. An alcohol inked skull.

My inspiration, although much more attractive to look at than my mess here, was a piece of art by the artist Damien Hirst. "Cornucopia" as the art is entitled, is a group of skulls painted in many colours with gloss paint on plastic skulls...here's the exhibition piece at the British Museum...



I loved the way he took a normaly morbid item, and made it a pleasure to look at, so i thought i'd have a go with what i had in my craft room.

Well you are probably thinking, "how hard can it be to ink a skull?" Very hard as it happens! First i painted the skull white with white Stazon ink...lots of it! Then i needed to get layers of clear ultra thick embossing powder onto the skull evenly. For those of you wondering what i was doing with a skull in my house, it was a resin one i got from ebay.

Not as easy as it sounds, lots of dabbing with an embossing pad, until i realised the pad was not up to the job, so i painted embossing pad ink onto the skull. Now when you melt the powder with a heat gun on card, it's flat, on a skull however it runs everywhere. So i had to hold the skull with either my hahds or pliers (depending how hot it got), and gradually add the ink colours and extra layers of UTEE.



It's like coloured glass, and like all alcohol ink projects, i love the way the colours are unpredictable when you apply them. You just never get the same effect twice.



The whole thing took me probably took about a week in total, i kept going back and forth to it as it was a nightmare to do.



Damien Hirst's work is most definately an aquired taste, and a lot of his work i bit macabre, but Maddy says he has always been that way. It is a small world indeed, Maddy used to go round his house when she was younger, she was good friends with his sister. She says he had his artwork all over the place and he was really good. He seems to have done ok for himself anyway.

Whilst my effort may not fetch the many millions of pounds that Damien Hirst's go for, i like to think it will grace the shelves of my craft room for many years to come, and one day maybe make at least £2.50 at a car boot sale. :)



Thanks for looking, i hope you like the colours, it just goes to show that there is little you cannot ink!