Christmas Tree Glow

Christmas in less than 10 days! Although I don’t celebrate Christmas like folks in Europe or the U.S. do, I have been making quite a few preparations to make it all festive. Hello Kitty decorations in the house, including the Christmas Tree of course, and making plans with my Dutch partner’s side of the family. And of course, getting creative with some painting! Here is one I had started a few weeks ago, experimenting with some mixed media again…

The Beginning

This time, I opted for some black paper and have a play around with metallics, just to see how it all pops out beautifully! First, a rough sketch with white chalk pencil (makes it easier to erase marks) on a blank page of Art Gecko’s black A4 sketchbook. I thought I would go for simple shapes this time so I can focus on the visual effects of metallic paints. The tree was then filled in with a matte texture combining Daler & Rowney Yellow-Green acrylic ink, Dylusions Fresh Lime and Dina Wakeley’s Evergreen paint. The last two are by Rangers, not exactly professional grade and more suited for mixed media work, but the colors are wonderful. For the star, I initially went for fluorescent yellow but didn’t like how it looked and replaced the color with gold. Acryla gouache was selected here for its thick viscosity so the shine pops out even more.

Stencil Work

And the pièce de resistance: Introducing some pretty textures in the tree with a stencil! It was a good thing that I opted for a triangular tree that was straight down as it was easier to apply masking tape on the edges. The desired stencil was then placed on top, secured with a masking tape on the edges and away I tapped some paint on! Here, a cheap small make-up sponge was used to carefully incorporate the green metallic shade, a blend of Old Holland’s Iridescent Jade and Talens Permanent Green acrylic paints. Looking good so far! But uh oh, I managed to accidentally spread some paint out of the masking tape and onto the background. And trying to cover it up with black gesso worsened the situation as you can see it was patched on. So what to do now?

The Beautiful Mistake

I was originally intending to keep the background plain black with just the Christmas Tree. And now that the offending bit of paint was sticking out like a sore thumb, a change of plans! No big deal. A chance to play around with some glitter then! After having painted the base of the tree with Acryla Gouache in Light Red Bright, I set about applying some green Ranger’s Stickles glitter gel in green with my ring finger. However, I felt the painting still needed something more to make it look more intriguing and hence glued on two small craft punched star shapes from origami paper. Introducing a bit more red also seemed a great idea to reinforce the Christmas theme. Finally, I spread some gold Izink glitter paint with a palette knife with the excess carefully tapped around the base of the tree. And now!

Love it! Unfortunately, the photo doesn’t do much justice as I struggled with trying to capture the metallics and glitter with proper lighting without sacrificing the need to keep the entire background as black and matte as possible. A bit of tweaking here and there and I got it a decent quality. Nevertheless, I did have a lot of fun again creating this piece despite the earlier mishap and am very pleased with how it turned out. Look how beautiful this tree now glows and shimmers!