Minnie Blue Eyes

And here is another painting I made whilst following Juliette Crane’s Whimsical Animals on-line classes! This next unit is Adding Layers to Change Your Animal which of course speaks for itself: The objective is learning to “make changes to our whimsical animals to evolve them into new characters” as quoted by Juliette herself.

The Start…

To be honest, I was not even sure what animal I was going to start with. All I was doing was going with the flow and see what character I could come up with. The first step was creating our background on a 30 x 40cm canvas board by randomly glueing on bits of collage paper and finger painting acrylic colors in between to fill in the white spaces. A variety of collage papers were used including lokta paper, origami paper, tissues, napkins and unwanted gift wrapping paper. I thought it would be cool to include stuff from Japan too. And as you can see here, some strange character emerged; a bear, rabbit or even a mouse? One thing was sure though. I did not like the yellow area on the head and totally unsure of what the next step would be. That Ugly Stage or just getting stuck was starting to kick in. So I left it on and off for a few days…

A Week Later…

Setting it aside rather than dwelling on it was the best way to deal with this “in a rut” situation. Over time, you get a bit more inspired and the ideas come rolling. I now decided I was not going to follow Juliette’s painting too closely and decided to do my thing. I don’t think she will mind! Since I really liked the collage papers, especially on the dress and the character’s left ear (right-side from viewer’s perspective), I was determined to hang on to them and even develop the areas further with more paper. The ears got smaller and rounder with the face painted in Titan Buff, an off-white shade. Then I created some negative space on the forehead for the jewels and in the background with the leafy shapes. Eyes became quite a focal point as I firstly filled them in with Teal followed by some shimmer. And now I decided my new character would be a mouse! A fancy mouse in fact. As finishing touch, whiskers and lashes were lined in glitter. Et voilà, Minnie Blue Eyes she is! Name is inspired by that Hugh Grant film, “Mickey Blue Eyes” and furthering that thought with Disney’s Mickey Mouse. Since my character is a girl, though, she goes by his girlfriend, Minnie Mouse!

Mediums Used

And here are what I painted with. Not all ate clearly visible in this painting since they were used in the earlier layers. Still, traces of them are somewhat noticeable which makes it all the more interesting as every layer has a “story” to tell. That’s one of the fun things about mixed media art!

Once again another inspiring, though intensive, lesson with Juliette. I have to admit I did struggle a bit in the middle when I was not happy with the progress and got stuck . Coming back to it days later, though, certainly helped as my creative juices came flowing back again. And I’m very happy with how the painting turned out. Now ready for the next unit!