Bunny in the Sun

Happy Easter everyone! it’s Easter Sunday today and it was a warm sunny day spent with boyfriend’s family for a brunch in the garden. I’d now like to share with you the second part of my Easter Trilogy, continuing from Bunny and Baby Teddies I posted here on Good Friday.  In this trilogy, I use the same bunny shape:  first phase is using the shape as a cut-out (positive space), the second using it as a stencil and the third using the stencil as a background (negative space).

Printed Background

For this piece, I used my Strathmore Mixed Media Sketchbook.  The background was actually unplanned and unexpected.  It started as a ghost print of a failed attempt at making a Gelli print from the bunny as you can see below in pink.  Then I decided create another Gelli print using various shades of blue fluid acrylics on another piece of paper and rolled the residual paint on top of the bunny ghost print as seen below.

I set the successful blue Gelli print aside to use for the next project.  And for this piece I’m doing, try another Gelli print and layer it on top this “leftover” imprint background.  I thus grabbed a round 8-inch Gelli Plate and spread some yellow acrylic ink over it (Dylusions Lemon Zest combined with a bright yellow Acrylic ink) before creating some stripy patterns with a forky tool.  This could be sun!

Paint the Bunny Pink!

Using the bunny stencil, I carefully traced the cute shape with pencil and then retraced it using a pink acrylic marker.  The bunny was then filled in with a mixture of Dylusions Rose Quartz paint and Amsterdam acrylic Light Rose, combined with Gloss Gel to give some sheen.  I still wanted the transparency so the background would show through.  After finishing that, though,  I felt the painting still needed a bit more.

I then added some small Easter Egg shapes with rubber stamps and Distress Oxide in Picked Raspberry, but realised it was a mistake.  I did panic a bit I have to admit, but then took a deep breath and covered it up with some white gesso.  It didn’t completely hide the mistake, as you can see traces of the pink ink, but after letting the gesso dry, it didn’t look so bad after all!  Boyfriend said they looked like Bunny’s footprints.  And besides, it was the right kind of addition I was looking for: A bit of pink to “connect” the bunny to the background.  Et voila:

I’m really getting into this gelli printing again.  And it’s great to discover what you could create out of failed attempts and leftover paint.  I decided not to add any other colours or details like eyes to the bunny as I wanted to leave her looking mysterious.  Also, my intention was not to distract the attention away from the interesting background, which is something I rarely do since I’m usually focusing on the subject.  Always cool to do the unusual again!