From Sketch to Painting

About a week ago, I drew this sketch of a boy and his dog, thinking it could be a fun autumn scene... but I only had a vague idea at the time what the background might look like or what colors I might use in the final painting.

After transferring the boy and his dog onto a 5x7 inch canvas panel, I sketched in some trees in the background, and started to paint the sky a bright blue, the leaves on the trees vivid orange & yellow, and the grass two tones of bright green.

It was at this point I suddenly realized that my painting was going to be super colorful!... and I wasn't quite sure how to choose the colors for the 'main characters', the boy and his dog. Hmmm... This would be challenging!

"A Boy's Best Friend"

After a bit of trial and error, this is what I came up with... and I'm happy with the final painting! A bit of a wispy white cloud helps to balance out all that color!... and some outlining with a micron pen gives the painting a little dimension.

I hope you like this little autumn scene of a boy and his dog!... I sure had fun creating it!!  :)

"A Boy's Best Friend" can be found in my Etsy shop, PholkartStudio.

My Very First Mixed Media Pumpkin Project

"Harvest Pumpkin"

A few weeks ago, I was browsing in my favorite local craft shop... and discovered the PERFECT pumpkin-colored piece of scrapbook paper! I knew right then and there that that orange polka dot paper was coming home with me, to be used for some future pumpkin-y project.

I've been painting for a while now and have gotten pretty comfy with my self-taught technique... but I'm a newbie to mixed media and I've been wanting to try my hand at it. So I printed out an enlarged version of one of the digital stamps I used to design, "Folk Art Pumpkin"...

...and modified it so it would fit on my 5x7 inch canvas base. I had to crop one of the 'swirlies' and flip another 'swirlie' around to the opposite side. I also decided to delete the heart on the pumpkin for this project.

After base coating my canvas panel with black paint (it took two coats!), I flipped my printed pumpkin over and transferred my pumpkin design onto the back of the orange paper using dark graphite paper. I did the same thing with the leaf design, transferring that onto a textured green paper. It took no time at all to cut out my pumpkin pieces, since this is such a simple design.

Next step was the Modge Podge. I carefully brushed the back of the pumpkin with a thin layer of Modge Podge. Then I adhered it to the middle of the canvas panel, making sure to smooth it from the center toward the outer edges, so the edges were glued down firmly. I eyeballed the placement of the green leaf and Modged Podged that too.

Last of all, I transferred my 'swirlie' pattern to the black canvas with a light colored graphite transfer paper, and penciled in 'harvest' in the upper left corner. The rest of the design was finished by painting the lettering and the 'swirlie' freehand using a small round brush. A couple of coats of Krylon matte acrylic spray and my Harvest Pumpkin was done!  :)

Now that I've created my first mixed media project, I've definitely caught the bug! Can't wait to figure out what my next project will be!

(...and of course, now I have an excuse to collect all that gorgeous scrapbook paper I've been resisting! *wink!*).