Teddy Bear Trilogy: Brown Teddy

It all started with me trying the practice session from another book Adventures in Mixed Media by Amy Jones. There I was supposed to spread some acrylic paints on paper and with a stencil rub some off. As I don’t have a stencil, I made one using deli paper since it’s waxy on one side. But things went belly up since the paper is too thin. So Plan B!

I asked my boyfriend, “So should I draw a bunny or a bear?” “Bear!”‘ he replied immediately without hesitation. Okay, bear it is then! I liked the size of my Hello Kitty hand fan so I traced the figure with tracing paper but made the head a bear in place. Then with a graphite transfer paper, again traced the outline on my painting paper. I recommend graphite transfer paper (I got mine on Amazon) instead of carbon copy sheets since they don’t smudge easily and can be easily erased using an eraser!

I cut up the deli paper stencil and where the paints were smudged on it, glued with gel medium bits on the upper left and bottom right corners of the painting. And making sure the opposite colours were glued on, i.e. blue on the yellow and orange parts and pink on the yellow as well. Letting the glue dry, I cut out the teddy bear and glued that on the painting too.

But I made another boo-boo! The grey teddy bear paper was not thick enough and hence got wrinkled and stained with the glue. There was no way I could use the cut out shape as is. So I decided to paint on it. First I carefully brushed on a coat of white gesso and once ready, I filled it all in with brown acrylic paint combined with gloss gel. I then let that dry before adding the manga eyes and stamping on some old bubble wrap sheet with bright green ink. And now…

I decided not to draw other things around the teddy bear because the background itself is quite elaborate. And also, I wanted her to be centrepiece as subject. It’s amazing how far the creative mind works when things don’t go as planned. As for the Teddy Bear cut out, I decided to keep the rest of the paper and do other creative things with it. Two are on the pipeline so watch this space!