Is It Really Spring?

What a volatile spring we are having this year! Wasn’t it above 20°C a few weeks ago? This weekend temperatures fell to 10°C. In fact, the tulip season didn’t seem to last as long as I had expected. And compared to last year, am not noticing blooming flowers as much. Maybe because it’s been quite chilly outside that I didn’t feel like going for a walk to notice haha. So here I am still painting flowers whilst dreaming about warmer temperatures. Something to lift my mood.

What a Mess!

It all started with another failed attempt at Gelli printing with acrylic ink! These inks are rather runny and messy for such purposes but I do love the colour combination of pink, magenta and violet. With the leftover inks on the brayer, I rolled the colors on the sides. Then I cleaned the brayer with some baby wipes and smudged some of the color on the paper with a flower stencil. This mess is going to be so much fun to work on!

Layer On

I tried to add some pretty leafy patterns using a rubber stamp and Cracked Pistachio Distress Oxide but unfortunately they didn’t come out as boldly as I was hoping. Oh well, not to fret, I traced over these leaves with bright green Molotow acrylic markers and filled in some of the leaves with the same color. On the corners I glued on some scrap washi origami paper which worked well in this piece. And I suddenly thought this was a good time to experiment with modelling paste…

Modelling Paste

Applying some Modelling Paste adds interesting textures to paintings. It has quite a sandy feel when touched. Here I scraped a bit on the colored-in leaves using a palette knife. Another cool thing I wanted to try was scraping on the paste with stencils! I picked one up with a series of cute flowers. It’s quite simple to do but the challenges were keeping the stencil in place and being careful when removing it so it doesn’t smudge. And not forgetting immediately to wash off the modelling paste from the stencil so it doesn’t harden on it! Once the paste was dry, I carefully applied some Fluid Acrylic Paint in Hansa Yellow Light on these flowers. Then I used some Daler Rowney acrylic ink in Emerald Green for the leaves.

Flower Power

It was a matter of adding more till I was happy. This was especially true for the yellow flowers. At the same time, I didn’t want to overwhelm the piece with too much, as achieving a balance between the complementary colours was important. I also stamped on more leafy patterns but this time used Distress Ink in Mowed Lawn on the right side and bottom. Finally added some finishing touches on the painted leaves with some darker shades of green. And now…

Although this piece is not my usual style, it was a great experience doing something different for a change. I did try to maintain the kawaii-ness with the pretty yellow flowers to brighten up the sober background of magenta and purple. This was further enhanced by the use of modelling paste which helped these flowers pop out. And drawing the leaves in bright green was a great idea too! Whilst this piece may indeed look a bit chaotic, it is supposed to reflect the rather confusing mood of this Spring. It certainly doesn’t feel like Spring, does it?