Painting-Part 1

So here's my little mini-story.

I saw a photo in a magazine of someone who decorated their fireplace mantel with lots of paintings.

I love that idea- even though it's not a new idea, it hadn't hit my dense old brain.

And I was looking for something to brighten up my mantel.

Easy peasy I thought.  I can do that...let me try my hand at something I wanted to try.

Let me try making a canvas piece, something I have been wanting to try since I really like my backgrounds. And I thought they would make great painting backgrounds.

I even had an inspiration piece in my head.

I'd seen several paintings like this while in New Mexico by this artist Robert Cafazzo (from a series called After Muybridge). I loved them. He used these great backgrounds and then painted these animals (this one had horses). I love how on first look you see just the blue horse but if you look carefully they are all a little different.

I liked his pieces so much I added one to my travel journal. This is a cut out from an art/tourist magazine-one of those free ones you can pick up at cash registers.

Well I wanted to do my own painting, and not a copy.

You can see my background in progress up at the top of this post. Early base layer of collaged paper and some liquid acrylics. I also added deli wrap that was mono-printed and some stenciled acrylic images. You can see that at the bottom of this post.

I also took a bunch of Gelli-prints and tore them up, pasting them down on some paper.

These got a light coat of gesso to dull down the colors a bit, and then they got some stamp embossing in white.

I hand tore them to make images on my final background. Will show you that in another post.

Here's a more updated view of my background.

I am very happy with it.

So I still am working on this piece of art, but it is coming now at the point where I have it sitting in my livingroom and I am looking at it, making note of things that it needs. Almost finished.

Will show you some more another day.

Thanks for visiting.