Teddy Bear Trilogy: Golden Teddy

So here goes part two of the trilogy. This time I’ve taken the rest of the paper from the Teddy Bear cut-out I had used for the last painting, Brown Teddy, and used the outline as a stencil! I was curious as to how this would all turn out. You see, I never like to plan things in advance to avoid disappointment and find it more adventurous to make things up as I go along.

For the background, I scribbled a few spots of cobalt blue paint left over from the last painting. I then took some Ecoline ink and dropped a few whilst also randomly doodling hearts and squiggles in oil pastel.

Next I taped the stencil on the painting with masking tape and decided to make my Teddy Bear all gold! But before that, I applied a coat of white gesso in the stencil as primer so the gold paint, which is quite sheer, would become a bit more opaque. The gold paint was from Acrylic Metallic Extreme Sheen by Rayher.

Looks great so far! I wanted to have the gold reasonably opaque yet also revealing the colourful layer underneath so I took a stick and scratched criss cross patterns. Then outlined the Teddy in brown paint. For the background I painted a layer of turquoise and white on the top half and light green on the bottom to make sky and ground.

I was a bit distracted though with the violet and cobalt blue bits in the background. Then suddenly I thought the violet parts resembled flowers and the blue? Well how about fish? Bears also eat lots of fish, at least in Japan! So I took some coloured ink and added some stems and leaves to the flowers and eyes and scales to the fish, In between times, I stamped some dots with bubble wrap sheet and pink or blue ink. And finally, I made the eyes metallic blue by using also Rayher’s Metallic Acrylic Extreme Sheen and dotting the whites of the eyes with white gel pen

Et voila! And yup, I am happy now. I did consider dressing Teddy up with a string of pearls but thought it would be too much, considering the already elaborate background. I also quite like the vivid tones and the unexpected violet flowers and blue fish. I don’t think anything else is needed! So let’s keep our eyes peeled for the final part of this Teddy Bear Trilogy!