It has been a strange March this year. One minute sunny the next minute pouring with rain with strong winds in between from time to time. Sort of like autumn, especially as it’s still a bit cold. On the positive side, though, we notice some pretty flowers starting to bloom more and more each day! Something to look forward to. And here is a painting I made inspired by my stroll around the neighborhood a few weeks ago. Quite a few flowers along the way, and at one point, I even came across a little kitty on the street! What a great opportunity to play around with mixed media.
The Start
The painting begins with some leftover skin-toned paint smudged on a sketchbook page from weeks ago. It’s a habit I like to keep; whenever I have too much paint out of the tube or whenever I want to get rid of excess paint on my brush, I merely apply it on blank paper to be used for another time. Waste not want not! And around the page, I doodled some flowers and a cat and scribbled on with some Neon Tempera Sticks “Spring time, Bring it On”, realizing I forgot to add the “p” haha! Not to worry, it is going to be painted over as seen below. A combination of blue and turquoise acrylic inks were selected for this, two of which were from Daler & Rowney pearlescent range. Here we also introduce some mark making with bubble wrap imprints.
Gelli Printing
It’s not often that I get to make prints, and as I was in the mood for it, I thought it would be an idea to incorporate some. Gelli plates was a logical choice here given the simple shapes. First I went for the small triangle as the dress with some pink and fluorescent red acrylic paint with a little flower doodled on it. Then I went for the small circle with fluorescent yellow for the sun. The excess paint was made as ghost prints on separate papers for other projects!
Flower Power
And time to paint the character in! First the face in which the eyes were drawn in acrylic markers along with the hair, and the hat in black. It is intended to be a snow hat with two pompoms. Next the arms were added in fluorescent pink marker, followed by the grey cat with bits of the black from the hat. And the fun part now: the flowers! Here was the time to get all free-style with them, introducing all sorts of mediums including acrylic markers, ink stamps and stencils with Ranger’s Archival Ink and Distressed Oxide. So far so pretty!
Finishing Touches
And now… we need to complete this piece with some minor details. The first thing was the hat: It is not a Mickey Mouse head, but was intended to be a black wooly hat with two pompoms. Failing that, I chose to embellished it instead with some glitter pink gel pen scribbles on the ears and a cute Hello Kitty sticker so the pinks would match the outfit. Eyelashes were then carefully drawn in with glitter glue, whilst the cat’s face completed with white gel pen. Finally, the centers of the flowers were adorned with gel pens, glitter glue and Fluorescent Red gouache with a bit more flowers and leaves doodled in with metallic gel pens. And now we have it!
What an amazing mix of flowers we have here! And how colorful they turned out to be. So much positive energy! Experimenting with various mediums was so much fun and makes the painting more intriguing. As we see, mixed media painting should not just be confined to the brush; we have unlimited choices of mark-making instruments to enhance it including gelli printing, stamping and stencils. I can’t wait to create more now. And as the weather gets warmer, let’s go for more walks outside and churn out more kawaii and colorful paintings like this!
My Kawaii Quarter 