Powertex Wall Art for the Garden

When I have attended previous Powertex workshops, I have seen other people make abstract canvases but haven’t been inspired to try them myself. Then I asked our instructor Joanne’s husband Nick whether he ever made any Powertex sculptures himself or whether he was content to make the supporting hardware for us all. He said that he really enjoyed using Powerprint – a laserprint transfer medium that allows you to transfer a photograph to your canvas – and told me about one that he had made of tuis visiting the bird feeders outside their house. Well, then I was inspired! I could see the potential for making canvases that suited my garden and nature interests.

My friend Dominique and I went to another workshop at Joanne’s Hamilton studio and I was ready to create my canvas. I had found a photo in a calendar of a wood pigeon in a nikau palm that I thought would be perfect.

To start with you need a laser printed photograph of your picture, scaled to the size you want and potentially printed in mirror image because it will be reversed on your canvas. Then you rip around the edges of your picture to make a more ‘organic’ finish, position it on your canvas and mark around it in pencil.

Paint the surface of your picture and inside the pencil marks on your canvas with the Powerprint Transfer Medium. Carefully lay the picture face down on the canvas and press it in place, smoothing out any air bubbles with a credit card (and being careful not to rip your now wet picture by pressing too heavily as I did – thankfully you can rescue it).

Next you have to heat set your picture using a heat gun for 10 minutes. Joanne had an ingenious method of doing this using a cardboard box, with a hole cut in it for the heat gun, that was put over the picture to build up the heat and so that you didn’t have to hold the heat gun for 10 minutes.

Once the picture is heat set, you lightly wet the surface and start to rub off the paper using a gentle circular rubbing motion. This takes SO MUCH LONGER than you might expect. I keep thinking I’ve got it all removed and then Joanne dries the surface with the heat gun and you can see the white haze of the paper still there. The final result still doesn’t look very clear and sharp but then comes the magic trick: applying a coat of varnish really brings out the clarity and sharpness of the photo.

Then comes the fun part of decorating your picture. I had decided that I wanted to create a nikau palm around the wood pigeon and use 3D Balls to make the nikau berries pop out from the picture. First of all you paint around your picture with a base colour of Powertex fabric hardener – I used green for the bottom part of the canvas, mixing in a bit of StoneArt powder to create texture; and then added some white to the green to shade the canvas up towards the light of the sky. The green was totally the wrong shade for what I was envisaging but Joanne convinced me not to add yellow to the mix but wait until afterwards and then spray the canvas with a yellow Bister solution – which was perfect. The Bister solution is water soluble so you can simply wipe it off if you don’t like it or get it in the wrong place (like on the photo).

To create the trunk of the nikau I used Easy3Dflex powder mixed with brown Powertex fabric hardener. The Easy3Dflex mixture cracks as it dries creating interesting textures that I thought would be like a tree trunk, and I pressed in the lines to create the characteristic ‘segments’ of the nikau trunk. Spraying mahogany brown Bister solution over the trunk adds to the texture, especially as it goes into the cracks. A final touch of bronze Colortrix powder highlights it beautifully.

To create the nikau fronds I made a ‘clay’ using roughly equal quantities of the green Powertex fabric hardener and StoneArt powder. Then I rolled the clay out into thin sheets between pieces of plastic cling film using a roller and then cut out frond shaped pieces. I struggled to get these looking natural: initially I tried adding extra texture by pressing lines into the clay; then I sprayed it with a Bister solution; and then finally once it was dry I applied some terragreen Colortrix powder mixed with a little varnish to give it a luminescent finish.

To tie the picture into the canvas, I used 3D Balls (polystyrene balls) mixed with red Powertex fabric hardener and dropped these into place on the canvas using thin spatulas. I think this was the hardest part of the whole thing!)  I placed them on top of the nikau berries in the photo and then carried these out in lines beyond the photo so that they would look more realistic. Using some twigs to extend the lines added to the realism.

Although I was pleased with the canvas, it still felt like it needed something else. Then I was inspired by a fellow workshop attendee who had been applying bits of fern and bracken to her creation. She had some ferns to spare so I was able to apply these to the canvas using just a little clear Powertex fabric hardener and then highlight them using the terragreen Colortrix powder and varnish.

The Powertex fabric hardener is waterproof and will harden over 3-4 weeks to a stage where you can leave your creation outside. However, Bister is not waterproof so spray your canvas with some spray varnish if you want to hang it on a wall outside.

Mine now has pride of place in my new outdoor area and I think it is perfect for the space.