Another incidental creation. Most of the time they’re pretty out of the ordinary because once I begin with something, I find a “hidden treasure” which makes me want to continue recreating till am happy with it. I guess that’s a form of intuitive art. A few days ago, I created a piece by chance where a little cat is sitting quietly in the corner beside a burst of purple flowers smoldering upwards amidst a golden yellow haze. On the other corner is a blue moon fading in the background behind some more flowers. Wide-eyed kitty looks quite stunned but happy.
Funky Background from Failed Attempts
I thought I’d have yet another go with Gelli printing! It shouldn’t be difficult but I still struggle with getting the knack of it. One day I’ll finally get there but meanwhile, practice makes perfect! After coating a layer of white gesso on my 300 gsm mixed media paper (Cansons), I combined a big gelli plate with a flowers stencil and tried printing with lilac Distressed Oxide. It didn’t work. Ink came out too light. So I tried again with a small round gelli plate using blue ink and a flower stamp. Stamp didn’t show through so I stamped the flower pattern on directly on top. Ugh bad move. But am not giving up! Simply spritzed Dylusions ink-spray in Vanilla Custard over it and thought I’d call gelli printing a day. Then add a new layer of stenciled flowers with purple Distressed Ink. I moved the stencil around to create an upward pattern. Now that’s better, but what next?
Quick Turnaround
I took some time in deciding the next step. Maybe if I rotated the paper around I can see what to do. I definitely wanted to keep the purple flowers flowing upwards. Looks more positive by drawing the eyes in that direction. From that one big flower stamp on the blue “moon”, I added two more to enhance the flow. And in the empty right-hand corner, what to place? I needed something that would also fill in the “triangle”. How about a cat with her tail pointing leftward? I then carefully pencilled one in. First I thought of her holding a teddy bear but later scrapped the idea as I wanted to draw the attention to the flowers. Sorry Teddy! 😦
Split Complementary Colour Scheme
I was not sure what to colour the kitty in. Black would be too harsh. Orange or ginger? Too close to the yellow background unless I wanted to make yellow the leading colour. But purple seems to dominate the scene, with yellow as an attractive opposite or complementary colour. Perhaps an idea would be to go for a third colour, ie opt for a split complementary scheme and go for green. And so I decided to make the cat brown and the eyes green! Here I simply used Jane Davenport’s alcohol markers and enhanced the whites of the eyes with the classic Uni Posca pen. And added a finishing touch of Nuvo Drops for her posh pearl necklace!
How Hazy is That!
I was a bit disappointed at first when I was unable to get the Gelli printing as I had wanted. But I just kept going by adding layers over it and discovering what more can be done with it. That’s definitely the fun part of being creative and ending up with something unexpected. Especially when it’s something kawaii!
My Kawaii Quarter 