Mixed Media Monday

Good morning and happy monday everyone! I’m in a bit of a chipper mood today because we had a good weekend for the most part, ending in a lovely relaxed dinner with some friends last night that was just what the doctor ordered!

Today I’m dying to show you the backgrounds I started creating last week. As I think I mentioned before, my darling DH *skip* bought me a ticket to Juliette Crane’s How to Paint an Owl course for our anniversary. It only took a little bit of hinting!

For the first part of the course, Juliette has you creating beautiful backgrounds using lots of layers – stencils, paint, ink, collage. Whatever feels right to you. Of course, I ended up working on three canvas boards all at once, I was too “in the groove” to stop painting while I waited for some element or other to dry.

Here’s our dining table, covered in a shower curtain for easy clean up! Love my Ikea turquoise cart filled with all my mixed media and art supplies. You can imagine it all didn’t stay this clean for long – after I’d finished painting, washing the brushes and stamps took another hour!

It felt so good to just throw the paint on and make beautiful bright colours.

Collaging and stamping started slowly, and I went back over each one several times adding, covering, filling and making it all feel just right.

How the backgrounds stand at the moment. Next stage is putting Owls on them, but I’m missing a vital supply so they will percolate a bit longer until it arrives. Of course, I might just have a few more backgrounds painted before that happens! Another thing Juliette talks about is the fact that it’s ok to keep covering up and reworking your background, that it doesn’t have to be finished all at once. Let the beauty unfold before you!

Some of my favourite details. Main materials used: Acrylic Paint and Ink, with a little bit of stamp pads and collage elements as I felt like it.

Inspired by Juliette, I experimented with making my own stencils to use for these backgrounds. They worked better than I had dreamed, and I’m going to keep making them and tweaking the designs, so you might have to be patient a little while longer to see them. I am even experimenting with stamp carving, thanks to the inspiration from Julie Fei-Fan Balzer.

Tell us, what’s been inspiring you lately? Have you been doing any painting or other creating?

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