Continuing our Whimsical Animals on-line classes with Juliette Crane! And this next unit is Let Your Background Be Inspiration which was indeed a fun but challenging one. What I love about all her classes is that we work intuitively until we end up with something intriguing. In this case, Juliette came up with an owl, and although I normally do my own thing and paint something I’m more familiar with like a cat or rabbit, I was in the mood to challenge myself and paint an owl as well!
Inspired by Background
The theme of this unit is getting inspired by the background we create. Thus on a 30cm x 40cm canvas board, off we paint away starting with a dollop of white gesso and spreading with our fingers along with some acrylic paint, india ink and oil paint sticks. Juliette uses bleeding art tissues, but as I have none handy went for colored wrapping tissues instead. Here, I tried following her as much as possible as I needed to get accustomed again to her methods, ie. random layering and using alternative mediums like gesso, india ink and oil paint sticks. I’m loving the effect of the turquoise india ink and fluorescent pink and yellow against the Green Gold background!
My Little Owl
This time, I ended up reproducing Juliette’s owl but developed it in my style. The huge eyes and long lashes, for instance, are my “trademark”. I also made it more anime-looking and used quite a lot of bright vivid colors. Glitter was also spread around the head, lashes and feathers (I know, they may look more like leaves) and texture on the collar introduced with clear granular gel medium, metallic white and more glitter. Juliette’s idea of painting the background in Payne’s Grey was a brilliant one so I adopted that. Black would be too harsh. Instead of painting the entire background, though, I myself decided to create a negative space for the feather in the background. And now I’m loving my kawaii little owl!
Art Supplies Used
As you can see, a wide range of art supplies were selected. Golden’s fluid acrylic is typically used in many of Juliette’s classes, as are oil paint sticks, the latter being quite new to me. I would definitely like to have more practice using them! The Iridescent Jade Painstick was in fact dotted on the edges of the owl’s face. How pretty is that color especially when combined with flourecent pink! Holbein’s Luminous Yellow heavy body acrylic was also perfect for the nose/beak. Other brands I like are ARA acrylic paint and for glitter, I swear by Izink and Cosmic Shimmer as well as Ranger’s Stickles.
Though intense, what fun this session was! It took a few days to complete it, especially when needing time for the layers to dry properly. May I further add that I am very proud of myself for attempting an owl in a major piece like this one. In fact, it is not often I draw birds. Great to be able to check it off my list of “must tries”. And great to be able to successfully explore beyond my comfort zone!
Please click here for more about Juliette Crane and her amazing classes
My Kawaii Quarter 