Golden Sunshine

I thought I would give you all another sneaky peek into a creative process. Okay so last post we looked at a little journal creativity, now onto something a little more challenging. I thought I would post the process of creating a mixed media piece. Nothing too elaborate, collage and acrylic painting. Sounds easy...well truthfully it is. So lets begin.

Now I have a primed canvas board ready to go. Next I add a little paper for the background with some mat medium.




I'm impatient so I dry it with my heat gun. What can I say, I don't want to waste time so the heat gun is one of my fav essentials.
Next it's time to add a bit of paint. Now I want the background to be quite pale, hints of colour showing through but no real colour domination, so lots of white shades with hints of colour.

Now you can see the collage papers have receded to the background and have really become more background texture. Its hard to see here but hints of the original colours show through the painted surface. So now its time to sketch out a few ideas. I use a pencil to lay out a rough sketch then collage some papers over the surface. These lovely papers were part of a gift from the lovely Ro Bruhn. She has the most gorgeous papers available for sale.Fabulous colour and patterning. I would highly recommend them. The papers have formed the main structure of the figures dress and the building set into the background, and I have used an offcut from some text for the bottom of the bird cage. Now over the surface its time to lay on a little paint, beginning to build the main framework for the piece.

Oh dear no legs! Its a part of the process I will add them in later.
Little by little it starts to come together. Gradually I am building layers of colour, filling in the details.

See legs!

Now you can see the detail building. The dress sleeves, castle, tree and cage, the flowers. They are all strarting to pull together. It doesn't matter if it isn't perfect, just go back and refine it later. At the worst you can always start again. What's a little paint between friends! Time to cook dinner I'll be back later.

Okay back again. So now lets just keep filling in detail. Time to paint the features of the face. Now to add some fine detail using ink. I use a pen to draw in the detail of the dress, bird cage, castle and flowers. I add detail using acrylic paint to the flowers to create colour depth and highlight areas. The light is the trick. It has to look right. I'm not perfectly happy here but everythings a learning curve, right?
This photo had some sort of weird lighting moment its not quite as yellow as it appears here.



Now we are almost there. Add some flowers to the tree and the figures hair. These are tissue paper and then over painted to highlight them. Add the butterflies and bird, then the words and...

tada!

Well not a masterpiece but you get the idea. Now this is very not my usual style but I was having a little fun trying out something different and decided this would do to show you the process. Hope it helps.

We will get back to your regular viewing channel next post, promise!

Mixed media-collage : tissue, assorted paper scraps, mat medium, acrylics, ink