Wanderlust: garden of wishes

Series: Wanderlust 2021 #02

This was one of the lessons I was most looking forward to and to have it come so early in the course was a super motivational bonus — no abandoning everything after the first week… I love Laly Mille’s style and, while the soft, romantic feel is not necessarily what I want to emulate for my own style (whatever that turns out to be), her technique of using so many layers of collage and colour creates a wonderful depth to the finished image.

As with the last time I did a Wanderlust class by Laly, there were times when I could have stopped adding layers and been very happy with the result. I was particularly hesitant when it came to creating the round white flowers and when I took the plunge and did it, my first thought was that it had been a big mistake. And it did take some work to get it back to a place where I loved it again: more colour over the top of the white, some white pen scribbles for texture over the colour, shading underneath the flowers to give them dimension on the page, and finally adding the stems to ground them.

I worked on this over several days — some breaks were out of necessity, waiting for collage layers to dry, others out of the need to step back and figure out what was needed to continue the piece — but it was a satisfying process that ultimately produced something that I am very happy with.

Class:

• Wanderlust 2021
• Theme: Reflections
• Teacher: Laly Mille (website, Instagram)