Bright

Another art journal page. This one was inspired by the June challenge over at That’s Crafty; this month’s theme is “a summer’s day” and so I got out the bright tropical colours and butterflies.

The base layer for this page was made from torn pieces of patterned paper. That was followed by some stencilling: lines and leaves for structure and the sun’s rays for a bit of summery goodness.

Next, I added dabs of paint, spritzed them with water, blended them a little, and then blew through a straw to spread the colour out. I repeated this several times with different colours — drying each layer — until I was happy with the result.

I had a dig through my die-cuts box, found some butterflies and glued them to the page. I can’t remember what the centre one was originally coloured with, but the colour ran when I brushed the soft gel over it; luckily I quite like the effect 🙂

I wanted to add some black for contrast, so I continued the diagonal with the mesh stamping.

The letters of “bright” were stencilled with gesso, which promptly sucked up the colour beneath it and stopped being very bright at all. Rather than try to paint over it, I outlined the letters in black and white.

Then I added some white detail to the smaller butterflies and also to the black mesh. I coloured the butterfly bodies in glossy black and drew in antennae. To make them pop off the page a bit more, I also outlined the butterflies with charcoal.

The sun’s rays had disappeared a bit so I edged them with a gold pen. The finishing touch was gold splatters across the background.

Challenges:

• That’s Crafty – June 2018 – a summer’s day

Supplies:

• Prep & Stick:
  Finnabair – soft gel
• Stencils:
  Altenew – sketched lines
  That Special Touch – sunrise
  Andy Skinner – have your say
  The Crafter’s Workshop – mini jungle vines
• Stamps:
  Visible Image – mesh-ellaneous
• Colour:
  Dylusions acrylic paints
  Stuart Semple – gold
  Versafine – onyx black
  Liquitex white gesso
• Pens & Pencils:
  Sharpie extra-fine white paint pen
  Sakura glaze – black
  charcoal pencil
  Atyou Spica – gold
• Paper & Fabric:
  Strathmore mixed media pad
  patterned papers
• Embellishments:
  butterfly die-cuts from stash

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