Electrifying

Ever worked on a painting and decided halfway you didn’t like it any more or realised you made a mistake but worked so hard at it you don’t have the heart to destroy it?  And you are at lost?  I took a leaf out of some mixed media artists and used the “mistake” to my advantage.  Don’t rip it up, cut it up!  And use it for another art piece!

It started out fine.  Experimented with some liquid acrylic ink and blew the pigments around with a straw, then made a Hello Kitty cut out on another paper with my Sizzix die cutter and glued the outline (the die cut to be used in another project) on the inked up paper.

Then glued some scraps of paper around the place, including old washi origami bits and oh the wrapping tissue from Tokidoki (the cute animation) which turned out pretty well.  Then I was not sure what colour to paint around it so started experimenting.  Made a few mistakes on the left hand side of the paper and didn’t like how it was all looking.  Too shabby!!  The more I tried to rectify, the worse it got.  Panic!!  So….

I took another paper and with a roller started creating a purply-magenta background with shimmer using Acrylic Metallic paint “Extreme Sheen” by Rayher in pink.  Perfect contrasting colour for a yellowy collage of what I would cut up.  Whilst waiting for the paint to dry I cut up the “mistake” in 7 pieces and decided to use five of them (rest for another project).  I scrambled up the pieces which made it look even more interesting!  And now…

Much better!!!  As final touches, I embellished the painting with some ink and nib as well as white gel pen, including drawing in Hello Kitty’s eyes and nose.  I decided to call this electrifying because the patterns developed by the initial straw blowing and bright yellow collages.  And the satisfying thought of successfully  “developing from your mistakes!” is quite well, electrifying!