Girl Number 3

I'm on a roll.  I painted another girl on the back of a cereal box today.  Again, this one is very Kelly Rae Roberts-esque.  I tried another new technique.

I covered one of my rubber stamps in gel medium, instead of ink, then I stamped it on the surface.  I used water color to paint over it.  The gel medium acts as a resist to the water color.  It looked really good.  I wish that I had taken a picture of it right after I used the water color.  I ended up painting over it with acrylic paint because the dress needed to be more pronounced.  You can still see the stamp through the acrylic, but not as much as with the water color.  I want to try it again on something else.

Thinking About Flying

Inspired by the works of Kelly Rae Roberts and Susie Blu, I spent this Sunday afternoon trying another face.

I was very patient this time.  I started out with a piece of cardboard (OK, it's the back of a cereal box).   I tried something that I saw in a video by Samantha Kira Harding.  I put gesso on the cardboard, then wrote all over it with Prismacolor Premier markers (she used Copics, but I don't have any), then brushed gesso over the writing.  It smeared some of the marker which looked really pretty and you  could see a sort of ghost image through the gesso.  Then I used stencils and spray ink, acrylic dabbers, and ink dabbers.  I collaged some torn book pages, decorative tissue paper, and a lacy rice paper.  I went over everything with watered down Golden Titan Buff to calm it down a little and make the papers more integrated.

I drew the girl with a charcoal pencil, then painted her face, arms and hair.  After it dried I used a charcoal pencil, Pitt markers, and a white gel pen to draw her facial features.  After I painted the dress, I stamped a butterfly on regular white paper, reduced it, then colored it with markers and glued it to the dress.  I added the wings, some more stamping, and a little molding paste through a plastic grid.

I just need to brush a layer of gloss medium and it will be finished.

You know it's hard to develop one's own style.  I watch a lot of tutorials on Youtube and am addicted to arts/crafts magazines.  When someone is showing you how to do something, naturally, your piece is going to look quite a bit like theirs (just not as good, of course).  I'm guessing that many people gain inspiration and technique from others, then eventually develop their own style.

I'm working on it!!