Elephant Family - Lifebook Week 8

Hello My Beautiful People :)

Today I am really happy to share my week 8 Lifebook page. The lesson was with artist  Mati Rose McDonough. She is a abstract artist who makes colorful canvas paintings with whimsical embellishments. She was encouraging us to try out gold leafing in our projects. I am VERY pleased  with how my painting turned out. thought it is nothing like hers. I did use several of her practices and also picked my subject matter (the elephants) based on some of the things I saw in her gallery.

This project was really quite up my alley. I love to put color together in a random seeming...but yet intuitive way. I was happy to see another artist do this in a video. She didn't 'teach' at us but rather just showed what she does when she makes a canvas. I am sure some found that disappointing, but I felt very at home with her style so I wasn't constantly 'searching' for that thing I needed to learn. 

Here is my step out of what I did for this painting.

First I started with my 140 pd cold pressed watercolor paper in 12"X18" size. I squeezed out some acrylics onto my palette using colors I like and staying in cool tones. Then using a fat flat brush I just applied color in lines, squares, and marks as I felt like it. This is REALLY relaxing to me!

Next I got out some scraps of papers staying in the cool tones as well as some text and applied them in a collage using matte gel medium. 

Then I decided I wanted a dark purple with a harlequin pattern so I used a large stamp to apply that. Then I used a old credit card to scrap on some color and make marks here and there. Then I used titanium white and added some letters with another large stamp.

Next I tried for some drips using Heidi Swapp Colorshine sprays in gold, teal and green. I sprayed them across the top of the painting and then tipped it up and lets them drip down. 

White the drips were drying I was thinking about gold leafing... and what kept coming to mind was painted elephants for the festival of Jaipur in India which happens in late February/early March. It is something I would love to experience. So I decided I needed to draw some elephants but I did not want to do it directly over my layers (also the painting was taking forever to dry) I decided to draw them onto deli paper and collage them on later. 

Once the drippy bits finally dried...I decided to go in with my warmer colors. I wanted yellow and a orangey red for sure. I used my brayer to apply the colors and then went over some areas with the brayer with white gesso as well. Then I really got into finger painting... added marks and smears with the red, yellow, white and even some purple and blue. I also added more credit card marks with the bright green.

Then I applied my elephants using matte gel medium. I used my fingers to apply everything. 

I blended over the edges of the paper as well using the same colors of paint as in the backgrounds. Then I started to paint my elephants. I wanted to have the colors of the background show through the elephants...so I used a very watered down combo of white and black to fill in their skin. I painted in the skin designs using the same acrylic colors and then went over the lines with black and white Posca pens.Finally I added gold with a sharpie gold poster pen. Then I painted and outlines a sketchy tree on the right edge.

The last step was to add gold leafing to the sun and the tree. It was a messy project but it looks pretty cool. I ordered the leafing kit from amazon as I just didn't have time to run to a store this week. My kit was faulty having 2 jars of sealer instead of one jar being adhesive size.... so I had to use tacky glue to apply the leaf :(

I hope you like my elephant family as much as I do. Leave me a comment or a +1 is you do :)

<3 Shel