New Mixed Media Painting - Abstract Poppies

I think I'm finally starting to get caught up after the holidays... so much going on for the last few months! Anyway, one of my goals for this year is to make more of an effort to post things besides my StencilGirl scheduled posts. Looking back at my blog recently, I think that's all I've posted! So I'll try and mix it up a little more :)

Now that Christmas is over, I can share one of the big projects I worked on last year. My mom had been saying she wanted one of my paintings to hang in her house. There were a few small ones I'd done (one version in my art journal and another 8x10 hanging on my wall) and she wanted a bigger version. However, while she thought I was giving her a framed reproduction of the one she liked, I decided to actually paint her one. When she opened it on Christmas morning she was surprised and excited to have gotten an original :)

Here's the painting for my mom - mixed media on 16"x20" clayboard (mostly acrylic paints, heavy body.)

And of course, I have to show some close-ups and a bit of the process.

The original that she liked had some filigree type rubons in the bottom right corner and throughout the piece. I wanted to replicate that, but I used molding paste and stencils to get a similar look. I took bits and pieces of new stencils by Kate Thompson layered together to get the swirly parts (Fractured Cherub and Cherub Circle.)

(When I'm shopping for stencils, I don't just look at the image as a whole. These are both gorgeous stencils, but looking at bits and pieces of them makes them exponentially more usable!)

I also took the Tiny Medallion stencil by Maria McGuire and masked off part of it to get the design I wanted and added that here and there on the background.

I switched back and forth between working on my easel and working on my desk as I went...

(I'm pretty proud of my "poppy" circles... in the original versions, I cheated on the shading and used oil pastels. On these, I could really see the effect of my drawing classes on how I could shade with paints. Exciting!)

Since the piece was so much larger than my art journal page and didn't have a quote, I added more to the top right corner. Then I finished it all off by using Fragments embossing powder with gel medium along the bottom of the book paper (which was from a vintage copy of "Tartuffe" by Moliere) - when you heat the gel medium, it makes it bubble which is the exact look I wanted. And that was pretty much it!