Finished!!!

Oh My Word!  I just took a photo of my Goddess in daylight!  I am just so proud of her.  Having never painted a canvas any bigger than A4 AND I only really started painting seriously about 8 or 9 months ago (save for the stuff I did at secondary school) I am just amazed at myself!  Of course she isn't going to make it to the Tate or any other grand art museum or gallery, and she did have a few little 'accidents' along the way but to me she is perfect and I love her!  To be fair though I am fickle so probably the next one will be the love of my life too ha ha!

 

I finished the detail on the butterfly whilst watching Harry's Law last night!  I find it impossible to just sit at 'watch' TV these days, I have to be doing something else at the same time!  The butterfly is actually a sort of failed attempt at making a 3D butterfly in flight.  I cut some pretty colored paper from a glossy magazine and stuck it, face down, to  Habotai silk and then I thought I could dry it moulded over something curved.  This clearly wasn't going to work so I decided to dry it flat and then sew beads on it and build up the undersides with molding paste on the canvas.  Then I just chickened out altogether and applied it as it was to the canvas with Matte Gel Medium and detailed it with black ink, white gel pen and gold pen! 

Almost There

Late last night I noticed that the lovely Tam had posted this weeks video tutorials and of course I just had to watch them both before bed!  So today I have played...ALL DAY!  Well nearly, we had more snow so had to shovel the driveway, but apart from that...I played.  So here she is, almost there.  I still need to do the detail on the butterfly - gel medium takes a while to dry.  I also want to paint the sides of the gallery wrap in gold acrylic too.  I used a little rub on gold leaf which needs to be sealed so I will give it a light coat of acrylic matt varnish when I'm happy that I have it totally finished!  It isn't the best photo but the best I could do under electric lighting!

Two Hours of Pure Bliss

squirreled away in my studio!  First I tidied, I'm just so bad and dumping things on my desk when I'm too busy to put them away properly, and then I pay for it when I want to paint cos I have to tidy it all away before I can start!  Today my Glass Bead Gel and Self Leveling Gel arrived so I was anxious to play.  I have never used either of these mediums before but I recently saw a canvas and instantly knew that this is what they had used to achieve the wonderful textures.  I also recently bought some gorgeous fabric to make cushion covers for the lounge and Lovely Man has knocked a hole in the wall to make an archway into the 'new' dining room.  So I had this idea.  I love the colors and the flower pattern on my new cushion covers and thought that the design would lend itself perfectly to the canvas I had in mind, and if i painted it for the lounge it would all sort of co-ordinate.   So here is the cushion...

AND  here is the first stage of the canvas...

First I drew the pattern onto a 16"x16" canvas.  Then I painted the background with a nice  mocha shade in acrylic.  Tomorrow I will be starting on the outlines, first with a pale yellowy gold acrylic and then centre line of black bead gel to create a stain glass window effect.  Lastly the gray and blue petals will be done with self leveling gel which, I understand, will dry to a smooth High Gloss finish. Et Voila!

Finished!

Remember this beautiful young lady?  This is Amber.  Her mum Sonia, a friend of mine, said that she would love to have a painting of her so I duly offered!  I just did Tam's Heart, Art & Healing course and have enrolled on her Magical Mythical Makings course starting in January.  I just love this whimsey style and experimenting with new mixed media so I was more than happy to have the opportunity to play with new ideas and techniques.  So here she is Amber: The Angel and The Unicorn

W.I.P.

Hi all my arty, creative, blogging pals!  Remember last week I said I had two little piccies going on in my head?  And then on Monday my little snow queen was born?  Well, this morning I woke up and the other little girl, an angel, was there again in my head and this time she had someone with her.  I told Lovely Man about my angel and he said "Why don't you go sketch her now?"  BUT  I had promised yesterday that I would do everything I needed to get done and go x-country skiing with him this morning.  So I said "No" she would wait.  I could see her very clearly and she wasn't going anywhere soon.

So this evening, after the skiing, the facebooking, the family phone calls and the beef stew and dumplings I got out the sketch book.  I had taken a photo of one of our local horses last week, with the intention of trying a horse sketch, which I got up on my computer screen.  And then it just all sort of appeared on the paper, and you know?  I'm really excited!  For a change I REALLY like her (and him)!  So much so I couldn't resist sharing the progress so far. 

Now question is...do I play safe and use watercolor crayons and acrylic as I have been for the other two I have done?  OR...do I maybe dabble with the oils I bought?  OR shall I do a truly mixed media - watercolor background as before, textured wings, acrylics and then oils for the face?

Answers on a postcard please!  Alternatively post them in the comments LOL!

Let it snow...

let it snow, let it snow!  Well here she is... my little snow queen!  I have a sort of love hate relationship with a lot of my art.  First I love it.  Then I get real critical and I hate it!  Then again I look and I start to think I like it!  Why is that?

I experimented for the first time with molding paste, oooh what fun!  I really like this, can't wait to use it again!  I also learned a valuable lesson.  As money is a little tight right now and I'm not planning on selling my art work (it's purely for my pleasure) I purchased lots of little boards quite cheaply so that I could play to my hearts content.  The lesson is - cheaper boards and canvases are ok -ish providing you Gesso them!  This one I didn't because I was being impatient - what a difference!  I was also keen to try out my new breyer but I wanted definite snowflakes and wasn't confident I would get that so I used scrunched up paper dipped in paint!  The lettering proved a little difficult and isn't as crisp as I would have liked.  I find it hard to 'write' with a brush, but I wanted white lettering in this particular font.  Any suggestions anyone?  I find pens easier, can anyone recommend a white pen?

Anyway in the end I started to like her so much I framed her and put her on the wall!

W.I.P.

Well a very sniffy hello to all my arty, bloggy friends!  Yep I tucked myself up on the couch most of the day with the lovely Tam and her tutorials having woken up with a sore throat and the sniffles!  Lovely Man disappeared off to practice ballroom dancing on his own and then, bless him, he went to the cat rescue and did my hour of volunteering!  What a yummy man eh?  So anyway having watched the tutorial my creativity started to get the better of my cold and I took off down to the studio for some painting therapy!

Last night I had Gesso'd a canvas which was now dry and ready.  I re-sketched me from yesterday having studied Tam's instructions.  Keep it simple, make the eyes larger, mouth smaller and so on.  I also finally worked out, again with a little help from Tam, how to get the background effect I had been longing for!  Gee Whizz I am so glad it's easier than the methodology I'd concocted!  Lesson here is watch the tutorial BEFORE you start!  So...it's not finished yet but I have had to leave it to dry off a bit before I can go to the next stage, and well Lovely Man deserves a little attention for being so nice doesn't he?  

Ok  progress so far...

My first life painting!

Ta da! Here it is my first attempt at a life painting/mixed media! Oohh this was a frustrating little project! I had all these ideas. I am a great admirer of One Little House. Maisy has recently done lots of mixed media ladies and I absolutely love them. I've also been watching some tutorials on-line about layering with acrylics and generally swotting up! So there I was with all these ideas swimming around in my head when I realised that I didn't have any Golden Matte Medium which is apparently what I need to stick things and be able to paint over it. And when I looked further I didn't have a lot in the way of things to stick on either, despite having oodles of boxes of what Lovely Man refers to as "Crapola".

So I sorta ditched the mixed media thing and just went for a little canvas painted with acrylics. At least I could do the layering thing and experiment. All was going quite well. The background came out more or less how I wanted it. I had used gesso to prime over the top of my pencil sketch (I thought I read somewhere that was what you did!) And I did layers of thin colours and then used a scrunched up piece of tissue paper to dab some lighter blues and white on. I used a BIG round bristle brush to dab about a bit with the greens and some yellowy tones.

Then came Kelly. Oh my! I've never mixed skin tone before! I had a vague recollection of an art teacher at school saying you mix a pink and then add a tiny bit of yellow. Poor Kelly nearly ended up some very strange colours. Eventually she ended up like this but I haven't a clue how I did it and I'm still not sure I'm happy with the colour but hey! It is the first one and I just wanted to have a finished piece. And how on earth do you paint fine features with even the smallest brush? I retreated to my trusty Faber-Castell Pitt Artist Pens in the end! Hey! It's mixed Media OK?! I wanted flowers at the bottom and a butterfly but I was terrified I'd ruin it if I tried to paint them. Then I remembered my mum gave me some transfers of flowers from her card making stock and I searched them out. Whilst doing that I came across a rubber stamp of a butterfly and a gold ink pad. An idea started to take shape. Mixed Media. That means you can use anything right? So Hey Presto! One mixed media canvas, albeit a little crude and perhaps childlike!

So without further rambling I present..............

Kelly Berkey in mixed media! LOL!

I now patiently await your lovely comments (be kind ladies!) AND my order from Wallacks before attempting a more 'professional' piece! Oh and if I thought this one was an exercise in stretching outside the comfort zone go visit Kelly's blog and see what she has for us this week! OMG! Face, hands....and now feet too!!!