Art du Jour 54

On the weekend my daughter came over to learn some of my mixed media collage making techniques.  She made a lovely picture,  of which I neglected to take a photo,  using predominantly greens, yellows and blues.  At one point during the process I asked her if she wanted to use a picture I had of some oranges which I had cut out of a magazine and with no hesitation at all she said no.  Imagine!

So I used it myself.  I’m still in show and tell mode,  so I’m sharing my latest artistic journey with you. Yes, apparently it is your lucky day.

It all started with a piece of an old road map glued to a flat 11 x 14 canvas.  When it comes to measuring paper and canvas sizes I still prefer inches.  I am THAT old.  Metric hasn’t taken over my life entirely.  And I didn’t really use glue, it was soft gel medium, brushed on front and back.

I have a lot of orange and yellow tissue paper to use up.  This project barely made a dent in it.  The paper is ripped and placed haphazardly and overlapped and stuck on there until I feel like doing something else.

Here is a sideways view.  Please don’t ask me why.  I added some black and white scrap tissue paper pieces over some bald patches.

Isn’t this a lovely picture of oranges?  It went on all wrinkly with the gel medium, just like the tissue paper did. Wrinkles add depth. To canvases. And sophistication to faces.  I should have cut all the black off around it, but I didn’t and it’s too late now.

I finger painted some gesso over the glossy cut out, then let everything dry before adding colour and shading with oil pastels.  My easel has a big lip on it at the bottom, so I balance my canvas on this ruler when I take a picture of it.  Otherwise you can’t see to the very bottom.  Not that there’s a whole lot to see there.

Oil pastels blended with finger tips make a really nice subtle border.  I used orange, crimson, dark green and black in random order around the edge blending them in to each other.  Then I think I did some shading on the oranges and stopped when one of them started to look like a pumpkin.

Finally I went crazy with my stamps using brown and black ink and  green and white paint. This is a close up so you can see how the map shows through all the crap I’ve put on top of it.

And that’s it.  Sign it, spray it with clear acrylic sealer, and call it done.

I am so far behind reading all the blogs I follow that I don’t think I’ll ever catch up.  Please know that my LIKES are very sincere and I am commenting in my head.

Okay, that was pathetic.  I will try harder.

Have a super day!  Colour something orange!