Friday, January 25, 2008

Here is my entry for the Mandala theme! Ta da!



I had a lot of fun creating this.

I opened a big container of "THE art STORE" gesso from Dick Blick and saw that it was super thick like modeling paste and so I used it to make the petals of my sunflower with my index finger. It is on thick! Then I just added layer over layer of acrylic paint in yellows and light oranges for my petals. I used a little raw umber paint and wiped it off really fast for the shading inside the petals and then outlined them with a black stabilo pencil. I collaged a made up poem from a page of text I ripped out at random from the large print edition of the book "The Girl With the Pearl Earring". It was a very serendipitous choice of page because it mentioned the colors I have here. That was a pretty cool coincidence, I must say.

The center triangle is some aluminum color metal sheet I cut to fit and textured with a tool I got in a repousse class I took from Beckah Krahula. I used dark umber paint on it and wiped it off so the paint stayed in the textured grooves. I used a little orange too. Then on top of all that I used my Neocolor II watersoluble crayons : yellows and white on the petals and bronze on the metal. I am going to make a full size photo stitching this together in photoshop. Then it will be a circle.

Now I am going to go work on "RED". I promise it won't take as long.

2 comments:

Judy Wise said...

Wonderful mandala, Catherine; I can't wait to see them all together. Thanks for the details; I hadn't thought to do that but it provides learning for the rest of us.

Laurie Mika said...

Yes, a terrific mandala....love the combinations of colors and materials. Judy is right, it is great to know the process behind the piece so thanks for sharing. It really is fun seeing what everyone has done. Can't wait to see the rest! Ciao, Laurie