Guess what, we had the full moon the other day! Then lately I have been noticing certain flowers starting to bloom despite the unusually cold rainy weather. Great, I’m thinking, as I start imagining a painting combining the two, a field full of pretty flowers with the full moon beaming above it. A great opportunity as well to returning to some black paper art and grabbing some old mediums I haven’t used for some time to create something stunning.
Rabbit in the Moon
It is always fun being able to integrate some mixed media craft into my paintings such as printing and stencilling. And why not? I think it adds another dimension to the painting, don’t you think? To make it even more interesting, an A4-size Art Gecko black paper sketchbook was chosen. I firstly created the moon with some Gelli arts printing using a small round plate and blending some fluorescent yellow paint acrylic by ARA and Acryla gouache by Holbein and for a chalky appearance, a few drops of white ink. Then just for some added kawaii, the Rabbit in the Moon was developed by drawing a bunny in with a cocktail stick on the paint. And why a rabbit in the moon? It is an Asian myth we grew up with, as the shadow on the moon’s surface supposedly resembles a rabbit pounding some rice. How sweet is that! I then smudged a bit of the leftover paint on the sky with a wet wipe and made a ghost print on the bottom to add some mystery. So far so cute!
Luminous Leaves
Once I let that all dry, time for some stencilling to illustrate the fields. Found a plastic sheet with some leafy patterns which would be perfect for this! With the aim to get the green to pop out of the black paper, Ranger’s Distressed Oxides in Cracked Pistachio and Lucky Clover were selected. I then carefully applied the oxides with a sponge, alternating between the two colors. Look forward to working on this further!
Flower Power!
And here comes the fun part. The flowers! Just to make sure the sizes and forms as well as positioning of them were as I liked, I lightly drew some in first with a white chalk pencil so it would be easily erasable. This was followed by randomly coloring and filling in with a variety of mediums I had at hand: acrylic pen markers (Amsterdam Acrylic and Molotow), 3D liners, (Sennelier) metallic relief pens (Amsterdam), glitter (Ranger’s Sparkles, IZINK and Marabu), gouache (Holbein’s Acryla) and gel pens. Basically it included anything metallic, sparkly, iridescent, fluorescent, chalky and pastel-shaded so long as they were further enhanced by the black background. Not only did the colors matter but also having textures such as shine, glitter and 3D. Too numerous to describe the process in detail, as I continued working on the flowers here and there, but now have a look!
What a rewarding session this was. I love how the colors and textures pop out against the black! It is not often that I get to integrate craftwork into my paintings. For instance, Gelli printing is something I have not worked with for some time and finally got around to going back to. Stencilling could also be used more often. The best part of course was just freely adding to the flowers and figuring out which colors or textures would work well together against black. I am very pleased with the result, and would definitely return to gelli printing, stencilling and black paper!
My Kawaii Quarter 