A Cup of Tea and a Sprinkling of Star Dust

There is something quite refreshing about creating something that is completely out of your comfort zone.  I'm not someone who likes to fail so I often find myself, in life as well as art, sticking to things that I am fairly confident I can achieve and, wherever possible, excel at.  When I read the new challenge at Mixed Media Place I was instantly excited about the theme of 'black background + all the colors of the rainbow' but the excitement was followed fairly swiftly with a wave of doubt and within a matter of minutes I was coming up with reasons as to why I wasn't going to enter!

In true British style, I sat down with a cup of tea and gave myself a good talking too.  I need to realise that this blog and the projects I work on are a journey.  Pieces wont always go to plan and I will make mistakes.  Every mistake I make will help me progress further and every blog post will take my a step closer to whatever goal my mind has set for me to achieve.

With those words fresh in my mind I sat down and gave the challenge a go....

I was initially going to work on a canvas prepped in blank gesso but in the end went with a piece of black mounting card.  I was worried about how it would hold up to being exposed to the water in the paints/sprays but besides a little bowing it survived surprisingly well.   I knew I wanted the colours to 'pop' off the black background so I started by sponging white gesso randomly over the card, concentrating on the centre and fading it towards the edges.   Once it was thoroughly dry I added Lindy's sprays in prime colours, hoping that where there was cross over I would create greens, purples and oranges.  Once this had dried I dipped different sized bottle caps, pen lids etc in watered down gesso and stamped circles randomly across the page.  I then lightly hand painted some stars and added very tiny coloured gems to their centres. I finished off around the edges of the board with small dots of Ranger Liquid Pearls in various colours to create 'star dust'.

I then filled each of the circles with Glossy Accents to create my 'bubbles'.  I love how bubbles reflect colour and I found that the Glossy Accents highlighted the colour underneath each circle and gave a gorgeous texture.

At this point part of me wanted to stop and leave the piece how it was.  It felt like a dreamy galaxy of colour and it felt 'safe', but part of me wanted to go beyond 'safe' so I started looking for a vintage image.  I wanted something that reflected how I felt about the piece and I came across an old photo (1920s?) of a woman reclined in a moon.  Her expression was dreamy and relaxed and I thought 'why not?!' and she was added to the piece.  She was originally completely black and white so I gave her dress a wash of green and added a hint of pink to her cheeks to lift her a little.

Besides being the most difficult thing in the world to photograph (shimmery colours, sparkles and glossy bubbles!), I am happy with the result.  It gives me a feeling of peace and wonder and that was what I was hoping for.

This challenge has definitely been that, a challenge, but I really enjoyed the process and might start looking outside of my comfort zone more often :)

I would like to enter this into:

Mixed Media Place Challenge 'black background + all the colors of the rainbow'

Thanks for visiting, always nice to see you :)

B
x