My Own Path

Hi there and happy November! Yes, time continues to fly by and now it seems we are only a little more than 3 weeks away from good ol' Thanksgiving--wow. I'm happy to report that I will be off-duty this year, as my sweet sister-in-law and her husband have offered to host Thanksgiving festivities at their new home in Wenatchee...yahoo! I am looking forward to it. For now, though, I continue to be thankful for each and every day and try to make the most out of the time God has blessed me with. I am waiting to see about a couple of design teams I applied for recently. If I get accepted by either of them, I will be busy with my art and crafts, which is always nice. I'm also getting ready to begin my journey with "faith journaling"--I recently won Jamie Dougherty's "Creating In Faith" contest and am awaiting a very large and wonderful package of faith-based art products and supplies. This is so exciting for me and I can hardly wait to start on this chapter of my artistic journey. Today I'm sharing an art canvas I designed for no particular reason other than I just wanted to get my fingers and hands all messy, which I succeeded in! I really enjoy playing with Gelatos from Faber-Castell--they make me feel all "artsy" and I always like to see what will come of a stark white gesso'd canvas. This is what came of my latest and since I haven't joined in a Mixed Media Monthly Challenge for quite a while, I decided to throw it into the new challenge for November posted over at the Mixed Media Monthly Challenge Blog-Challenge #18, Texture! There is always tons of fabulous inspiration over there and this month is no exception! The DT rocked their textural creations and there's also already several great challenge submissions, all of which I draw inspiration from! Thanks so much Mixed Media Monthly Challenge Blog!!! I {heart} you!

I'm not sure what this looks like to your eyes, but I was going for trees in the grass with a changing sunset in the background. My husband thinks it looks like trees in the water...?? I would hope that no poor trees would have to sit in yellow-greenish water, but maybe in the swamps?......heh.  Anyway, I still like this ok and I really just had fun making it and that makes it worthwhile. Here's the process.  First, as always, prep the stretched canvas, or canvas board in this case, with a nice even layer of Gesso.

Next, I colored a basic landscape with grass (or what my hubby calls a green lake, ha) and the sky in the background. I left spaces in the background for the trees.

If you haven't used Gelatos before, these are them. They go on a surface sort of like a crayon--a water-based crayon. You can smear them and blend them as much or as little as you like with water. A lot of water makes them drip or even turns them into a spray or splatter. There are so many creative avenues to take with Gelatos. They are also very forgiving, which is really nice for someone like me who has trouble with perfection. In the next pic, I simply spritzed a tiny amount of water onto the colors and blended them with my fingers. Note that it is a really good idea to have baby wipes or a few wet paper towels handy so you can quickly wipe your fingers clean as to not smear the various colors together too much, or else it will eventually look like a muddled brownish-pink mess--definitely not the look to go for. ;)

So now I have a basic idea of the landscape and now I can move on to bringing in the trees. This part was the most fun for me! I decided not to try too hard to get them right, but just let my hand go. I moved up and down with a dark brown Gelato and made some lines thinner than others, adding little "branches" coming off of some and not having a clue what the result would be....

I went on to blend the trees without any water, but just smeared the color to create a bit more definition in them.

Then I went over the top of the trees with a white Gelato and blended lightly to create highlights and the illusion of bark-like texture. Like I mentioned, Gelatos are very forgiving and the white one can be used over areas to create light where it might look too dark, to cast a shadow or cover up a mistake. I love these things.

To add even more texture on the trees and make them stand out more, I found a wood-grain textural stamp which I inked up in one of Teresa Collins next ink colors called Gold Glitz and stamped over some of the trees. It helped to define them I think. Then I took my PITT artist big brush pen in scarlet red and just add small bits of color here and there near the top of the "sunset" in between the trees. This just added a slight bit more to it quality of the background.

 Finally, I stamped a favorite sentiment by Ralph Waldo Emerson from Unity Stamp Co. onto white tissue paper and adhered it directly onto the canvas board with Faber-Castell Gel Medium (it works much like Mod Podge)

...then added some more textural stamping and a bit more white, yellow and green Gelato in between the words to make it look like it was really part of the canvas rather than a piece of paper glued to it.

So, are you feeling the itch to try some Gelatos yet? I hope so! They are so much fun and I really love mine. Thanks so much for checking out my latest art canvas! I really appreciate you stopping by and look forward to next time! Until then, have a creative and always blessed day!