Outside The Box

Another little Hello Kitty project! 🎀 A bit of mixed media again experimenting with the effects of painting over both soft pastels and oil pastels 🎨. And waste not want not with some Kitty-chan cut-outs from unused packaging 😇

Started by cutting out the ribbon 🎀 and Hello Kitty’s face from the packaging of my new car windscreen protector. Those other multiple ribbons I’ll use for another time. Outlined on paper boxes of equal sizes with a mixture of cobalt blue and orange acrylic paint 🎨 Then grabbed a selection of oil pastels (not water soluble so shows up over water-based paint) and soft pastels (water soluble and hence smudges with water-based paint). Doodled in 7 of the nine boxes using bright colours.

I then “washed” each square with diluted acrylic paint in the cobalt blue or orange colours I had used to mix to paint those box lines. Also used some green and white. Can you tell which one is oil or soft pastel?

Glued Hello Kitty’s face and ribbon in the remaining boxes and brushed a coat of gesso on the cutouts because the paper from the packaging was glossy, and gesso might help to adhere the paints (didn’t really help that much actually). Anyhow i added some paint wash there too.

Outlined two big flowers firstly with straight modeling paste for added texture and then mixed some of the paste with metallic paints in blue and pink to ensure thick consistency. Where the boxes had pink, I painted in blue and where there was blue I painted in pink to give contrast and let the flowers stand out more. The paints were of course blended for some continuity.

Finished it all off by “stamping” some gold and a bit of silver ink with some crumpled-up kitchen paper, et voilà!!