Abstract Christmas Art - DecoArt MMDT

AS my grandchildren said to me yesterday today is Christmas Eve Eve and I hope you are now ready for the festivities.

I have a Christmas canvas over on the DecoArt Mixed Media Blog  which originally started out as an experiment in abstract art and morphed into a Christmas canvas.

If you would like to see all the process steps and photos please pop on over when you have a minute to see how I brought this together.

Have a great weekend.

hugs Brenda xxx

Rusted butterflies and dragonfly.

It's the start of a new challenge today at Country View Challenges and the lovely Evelyn has chosen the theme of rust. I wanted to use the idea of rusty elements in a different way and having had such a fabulous response to my abstract art a few weeks ago I decided I would go in that direction to create the background.

I cut a piece of card 8 x 8 inches and brayered layers of cameo, primitive, lace and eternal chalky finish paints.

I then took a palette of titan buff, paynes grey, burnt umber, raw umber, prussian blue and yellow oxide media fluid acrylics and with a babywipe blended and very lightly dabbed on the colours in random areas.

Next came black gesso spread with a palette knife and spritzed with water to get some contrast into the background.

I wanted to be a bit more random with visual texture than just using a stencil so I took some kitchen cling film and daubed on white tinting base randomly adding some medium grey and burnt umber to it.

Some white crackle paint in random places but mostly round the edges and left to dry before colourising with some watery quinacridone gold paint. To give it just a little more interest I added the tiniest amount of text stamping.

The dragonfly was cut from some card I had been brayering off onto, run through the embossing folder .....

.....  and then coloured with layers of burnt umber, yellow oxide, paynes grey, tinting base and quinacridone gold - some of the paint was neat and some was watery washes. I dragged the coffee archival ink over before I glued him on.

I love how the veins show up more with the archival ink swiped over.

The small tag was randomly wiped with tinting base and dried and then dipped into walnut stain distress oxide and some left over quinacridone gold and raw umber watery paints. When dry it was stamped with the Tim Holtz butterflies which were also stamped again on cream card and the wings cut out and edged with black archival ink, bent on the thorax edge and adhered to the background images.

From the side you can see the wings fluttering giving additional dimension.

I had intended to add more collage pieces but when I got to this point I rather liked the simplicity, so it stayed as it was.

Here is the finished project. I made it to go inside a shadowbox. I'm very tempted to colour the frame but still not quite sure.

April????? Where did that come from???? Another year speeding past so quickly, but let's take time to watch the butterflies as they emerge.

Enjoy your weekend.

hugs Brenda xxx

Abstract Art - 001 - Soaring high and All Aboard at AVJ

So it's the third of March and we're celebrating our third birthday at A Vintage Journey and for this special challenge I have created something completely different. Our theme is called 'All Aboard' which leaves it completely open for entries and Creative Guide samples.

At the beginning of the new year I decided I wanted to do more 'art' and what I really mean is looking at my mixed media style and extending it, I needed to do some research and try to create some abstract paintings, which is where I really began my artistic learning back at teacher training college all those years ago. So I'm getting into 2017 with some abstract canvases - yes hopefully there will be some more to see how I get on - but this is the first. I'm looking to soar and fly high and enjoy this new part of my artistic journey.

- Layers of gesso applied with a palette knife and dried between each layer.

- Rub with a wet wipe and brush some thin layers of paint over the canvas and when dry brayer over white to touch the high points of the textured gesso.

- Rub some brown paint around the edges with a cloth.

- Stamp numbers randomly using permanent black ink.

- Now here's where I went 'off piste' and picked up the DecoArt chalky finish paint and using a palette knife scrape two different colours randomly on the canvas.. (I mixed the vintage rose colour using smitten, relic, whisper and cameo).

- Stamp again, this time use letters randomly and permanent black ink. In fact add some words if you like the look.

- Using the a palette knife again apply another colour still leaving previous layers showing through. I chose the cameo.

- At this point I was unhappy with the serene blue so I had another go with that colour and the palette knife - notice the straight lines appearing in these top layers and I remixed some pink too to lighten up some areas.

- Finally I mixed some whisper. and rustic to highlight a few spaces.

- When completely dry I rubbed coffee archival ink round the edges.

Here's the colour inspiration I found on my Pinterest 'colour palette' board.

So there we are, I'm not 'unhappy' with this 20 x 20 cm canvas but I can see I have lots to learn. I'm just gonna run with it and see where my muse takes me when I get a chance to experiment.

So hopefully you will be able to pop over to the AVJ challenge blog to see what else there is for your delight and certainly the Creative Guides have lined up some very magical creations and maybe you will share you art with us too. You never know you might win the £20 voucher being donated by Country View Crafts this month.

Take care and listen to your heArt.

hugs Brenda xxx