Long Summer Dress

What a confusing summer so far! A cold and wet June, followed by a spell of sunny days with temperatures even reaching 30°C.  Then os soon as we get all excited, temperatures began plummeting back to almost what it was!  Little One is also at despair.  Cant decide if it’s warm or cold! So why not get creative about it?  And now she wants to show you her latest creation… a colorful long dress with glittery sleeves and a shimmering hat.  Though not matching they do make a great pair, don’t they? And now, also being surrounded by Hello Kitty makes her feel even more special!

The Beginning

And look how adorable Little One looks in that pretty dress.  Long lengths seem to be quite trendy this summer, and it suits her so well! Naturally I wanted to paint about it. It all starts with a page from my Strathmore Visual Journal Bristol Paper which I have been using as a paint palette and on which I wipe off excess paint.  The page also doubles as a scribble pad for testing colors of pens or practice with rubber stamps. Once I was ready to recreate the page as a painting, I  began gluing bits of old napkin papers. So far so good!

Creating Layer

And now ready paint away!  A combination of Yellow, Green Gold and Deep Gold by Golden’s Liquid Acrylic was scattered around the page.  Initially I left the Hello Kitty stamps blank, but eventually filled all of them in except for one since it was not “contaminated” with paint. This was compensated by introducing some Hello Kitty cutouts which are actually tags from items during random merchandise purchases.  The face was then painted with Quinacridone Azo Nickel Gold blended with Titanium white.  Added more texture to the hair with one oil pastels and Sepia Acrylic ink.  Finally painted the sky with Cobalt Teal. And now we’re talking!

Adding Texture

Nearly there! Now need to finish it all off. With the eyes painted with Liquitex heavy body acrylics in iridescent green and black, I drew the eyelashes with Stickles glitter glue.  Added some definition to the outfit with Golden’s gold heavy body acrylic for the hat and ARA opaque titanium white for the dress collar.  Then some glitter with purple Stickles glitter gel on the hat and blue Marabu glitter gel on the dress sleeve.  A few additions in the background with more leafy collage paper and fluorescent pink 3D liner, and we are  good to go!

Not my best piece to date but I had a lot of fun with it!  Good practice too as I am trying to ease my way into getting creative again with mixed media painting.  Hoping that soon I will have more spare time to go with the flow.  Nevertheless, I do like the energy radiated in this piece with the warm background and colorful dress.  And the Hello Kitties make it cuter too!  A sweet happy painting featuring Little One again…