Mixed Media and Colored Pencils

Hey, welcome to my blog.... Over the past couple of months I have been busy doing a lot of things, but NOT artwork. I have finally settled down and am concentrating on some new projects.

I just finished this wall hanging, and it was a lot of fun to do. I did not follow any specific instructions...I just made decisions as I was going along. The project is done on 12x24 inch stretched canvas with 3/4 inch sides. First I covered the canvas with Texture Crackle, sanded it, then sprayed it with Krylon Matte. I then basecoated the entire piece with acrylic yellow ochre...after it dried I taped the different sections off and started stippling (using acrylic paint) with a sea sponge. The basic colour scheme I used was deep burgundy, dark brown, medium yellow and metallic gold. After spraying the project I applied the pattern (original sunflower pattern is by Linda Lock and can be found in her book Altered Art), basecoated it with acrylics, sprayed it, and then rouged on all my highlights and shading with oil paint. All the butterflies and inspirational words were applied using a stencil and Texture glass (with some acrylic paint added). I really enjoyed doing this piece - it ended up a little more colourful and bolder than I was expecting, but I am very pleased with it.

This piece, which I displayed in an earlier post, is the mate for the one above. Although I used the same basic colours as above, this one ended up with the lighter colours more predominant. It is quite obvious that I did this one first...it seems the more I do the crazier I get with my colours!

This pattern was designed by Sherry Nelson and can be found in her book Painting Songbirds - the bird is called a Blue Tit, which is a garden bird found in England. What a strange name for such a beautiful bird! All the instructions for this piece were for oil paint. I decided to convert everything to coloured pencils, and I completed it on 9x12 mi-teintes paper. The coloured pencil set I have consists of 150 different colours, so I found it easy to find all the shades to do this little blue tit. When I finished the main picture, I found the background paper to be very dull - it was a soft aqua colour. So, I decided to dress it up a little. I sprayed the picture with three coats of Krylon matte. Then I took a mop brush and VERY lightly brushed the light blue colour of the bird here and there on the background. I then did the same with the medium yellow colour from the flowers. I was very happy with the result.

 After working on the above wall hangings, I feel rather adventurous, so I am lining up some different projects to work on at my cottage this summer. I will be doing some silhouettes, quite a bit of texture work and some image transfers. I am looking forward to doing some experiments - should be fun. As usual I will be posting my work as I complete it. In the meantime, I still have lots of photos of artwork completed by the girls in my art sessions....I will post some of these pictures in a few weeks.

I hope everyone has a wonderful summer. Thank you for visiting my blog, and please check back soon.

 Joan