Glowing Garden

It’s the third week of July, just over halfway through the summer. Our beautiful garden is looking so stunning that I feel I need to paint more about it! And naturally, I was in the mood the other day for another flower theme and playing around with various mediums, some of which I haven’t used for some time.

Stencilling

One of the mediums or method I miss using is stencils. Used more commonly in crafting, stencils play a major role in Mixed Media. I’ve got quite a few stencil sheets stored in my drawers and regret not using them more often. Seeing how the colors would pop out, I thought Black paper would be a great background to work with. I first began with stenciling with three different green shades of acrylic ink and was amazed how it all turned out. Glad I did go for black paper after all! Tip is to tape the stencil down with some masking tape and tap the paint on gently with a hard brush.

Distressed Oxides

Another medium overlooked in recent years was my pile of Ranger’s Distressed Inks and Oxides. When I began doodling some leaves on the top with some 3D Liner (Sennelier), I realised I ought to incorporate more stenciled leaves. How about with a different medium then? Ranger’s Distressed Oxides it was, in Cracked Pistachio and Lucky Clover. Here we just rub some one with a sponge designed for this purpose. The contrast between vibrant green and the more subtle pastel shades of green worked very well.

Flower Doodles

To be honest, I was not sure what to do with this pretty background but the most logical choice was to go for some flowers. Some random doodles were thus drawn with a selection of mediums including Gold Relief Paint (Amsterdam Acrylics), 3D Liners (Sennelier), acrylic markers (Molotow) and Pearlescent acrylic ink (Dalers Rowney). I did not want to lose the background and hence only outlined the flowers without filling in the colors. So far so pretty!

Adding Sparkles

And no pretty painting like this is complete without any sparkles! For this I typically use glitter in the form of Ranger’s Stickles in squeezy bottle form. They have recently made a Gel version of this too which comes in a small jar. Another I recommend is Izink Glitter Paint which come in a myriad of pretty shades. The Stickles are great if you want to write or draw with it as they come in small squeezy plastic bottles. However, the Stickles Gel and Izink Glitter Paint works best when wanting to cover a larger area. All three worked really well together. And now I’m very pleased with the result!

Seeing how warm this summer has been, working with black paper was quite a soothing experience. It helped me cool down whilst letting me appreciate the beauty of bright summer colors even more. I enjoy working with flowers as well particularly as our recently-revamped garden gets greener and fuller everyday. It was also great to go back to stenciling again and rediscovering Distressed Oxides, and I should definitely incorporate them more often in my paintings!