From my Art Journal...............The Woman Within Myself!!!

I've always loved to paint, but stopped for many years and watching my daughter learn to draw and paint in her senior year in high school, got be back into painting.  I remember back in high school, I loved to paint in black and white and all the gray tones, no color for me, I remember my art teacher telling me to use color, and me refusing to, until I received a warning I would get an "F" if I kept using black and white only.  

Well as I was forced to use color in my paintings, I discovered that there is more to just black and white, and that you can do more than just paint on canvas, I switched to ceramics, then to fabric, wood, metal, etc. for the past 25 years I have painted on just about anything and everything and have enjoyed it pretty much, using bright colors and yes still using my favorite combination of black and white.  

I was going to do a portrait of my daughter, however I decided to continue with my attempt to get better at mixed media, which is totally new for me, something I've been afraid to do, simply because it was something I've seen so many do and in so many amazing ways that I was afraid to try and fail.  I do like to keep what I do to a minimum, trying to not make it to busy or cluttered for me to enjoy, is just a personal preference when it comes to painting. 

I wanted to do something that had some type of inspiration, I love my mom, God blessed me with an incredible woman as a role model.  She has been my rock, the one person I want to be like.  The way she always finds a way to be there for me, and my siblings, not to mention all the grandchildren; a total of nine to date.  I feel that women today are so much, they play so many roles, specially since many like myself not only go out into the world and earn a living, but are moms and have families to take care off. 

I hope that my mixed media painting for this week shows my view of the "woman within" myself.

This is a 14x17 painting I did last Wednesday, I was up till 3am finishing up, I just couldn't go to sleep till it was done.  I had an idea on what to do, and little by little it happened. I wanted to just paint, but instead I decided to use magazine pages to shape the profiles, and use pink tissue paper and plastic mash to shape a heart, and for textured I used Amazing Casting Resin instead of using gesso or modeling cream, I used the resin.  Please find below a few photos to show the process, I spent six hours working on this and I love the end result, I hope you do too. 

I used three different ink pads to color the back ground, instead of using regular paints.

I used mod podge to glue the tissue paper and the magazine page profiles, the black was one piece I hand cut and the other was pieced together into shape, looking at this photo I actually see two faces on the top profile.  Here is the first Amazing Casting Resin pour, love how quickly it sets. I wanted the hair to have a lot of dimension, so I decided to mix small amounts so I could give even more dimension.

Here is a close up, can you see the other face?  I used a little too much mod podge so I went over it with the ink pads and I love how it made the color deeper, thinking I might used mod podge by itself just to give the paints a richer color from now on. 

Here it is, the first cast of resin all colored, this resin takes any painting material, I've used different brands and they all work great, here I used Viva Decor 3D paint in black.

Now to add more resin, here you can see the second pour already set, it's solid white, and the last one was added also around the tissue paper, adding the plastic mesh that was cut and placed around the tissue paper, the resin in this case served as an adhesive. 

Now it was time to bring out more paints, I used several Viva Decor paints, but also several of my paint pens, I used Marvy Uchida Garden Craft markers, using my fingers to work in all the colors.

Here is a close up, we are all different, inside and out, the way I see it, in nature you will never find two flowers that are exactly alike in every way, that's how I see us, different and unique.