Art card: fencing

When I decided, at the last minute, to take part in The 100 Day Project my only plan was to “leave the house every day and take a photograph”. I certainly wasn’t planning to do anything more complex than that. To be honest, my main intention wasn’t really artistic: I just wanted a bit of motivation to get out of the house each day. [Note: this failed and I decided to gracefully withdraw]

So I definitely wasn’t thinking “and then I can use the photo I choose to inspire an art piece” and I am definitely not doing this every day. I’d never get anything else done!

But something clicked when I posted this photo and I knew exactly what I needed to do to recreate it. Expecting that I might want to do this again at some point, I decided to keep it manageable and restrict myself to ATC size (2½″ × 3½″)

I blended blue Distress ink over the base card and then blended a couple of greens onto a second piece of card. I cut the green piece into strips and glued them to the blue card, leaving small gaps for hints of blue to show through.

For extra texture and contrast, I sponged some more of the dark green on the lower third and dry-brushed a little white gesso on the top.

I shaped a length of wire to go across the fence, coloured it with a Sharpie and taped it to the back of the card.

For the railings, I used some wooden stirrers cut down to size. A few dabs of sand texture paste helped create that “not rusty, but starting to bubble” effect you get on some painted metal. Pearl black paint over the top finished off the railings. Matte black paint on one edge and a line of shadow created with watercolour pencil give the hint of there being a light source.

I am ridiculously pleased with how this turned out. It’s just this tiny little piece, but I really like it and I’m not sure why…

Supplies:

• Prep & Stick:
  Pinflair glue-it bookbinding glue
  Aleene’s fast grab tacky glue
• Texture:
  sand texture gel
• Colour:
  Distress ink – bundled sage, shabby shutters, stormy sky
  white gesso
  DecoArt dazzling metallics – black pearl
  Stuart Semple black 2.0
  Sharpie – brown
  watercolour pencil – black
• Paper & Fabric:
  Daler Rowney mixed media paper
• Embellishments:
  wire
  wooden stirrers