Tuesday 18 April 2017

Journal52 Week 15: Soft

Since the start of the year, I have been joining in with the Journal52 prompts by Effy Wild.  To find out more, and to join in yourself, you can check out her page HERE.  This week the prompt was 'soft', and for the first time ever, I created the whole page (except for the quote) myself.  It is the first time that I have created a picture/painting without using stamps or stencils for help; while I know that I have a long way to go with my painting and lots to improve on, I am really proud of my first attempt.

Acrylic paint only
I took my inspiration for the page from the quote and knew from the start that I wanted a waterfall as the focal image.  The original quote was 'Nothing is softer than water, but its force can break the strongest rock', but I adapted it slightly to better fit the prompt 'soft'.  As it was the first time that I was intending to paint the whole background, I wanted some examples to guide me.  I therefore did a google search and came across a fabulous photo which I used as my second source of inspiration.  You can see the original HERE.  Having coated my page with gesso, I lightly sketched the outline and added Distress paint in Mowed Lawn, Salty Ocean, Tea Dye, Pumice Stone and Hickory Smoke as well as some Adirondack paint in Bottle and some Reeves acrylic paint in Payne's Grey. I blended everything with my fingers, rather than using a brush.
After Neocolor II details
For the next stage I used my Neocolor II water soluble crayons and a water brush to add a little detail and sharpen up some of the edges between areas.  I used a mixture of light grey and white to add the water, but I wasn't entirely happy with the effect.  I didn't feel that it looked very realistic (even though I wasn't aiming for photo realism).  
With gesso spatters









At this point I decided to spatter white gesso over the waterfall and by a happy coincidence, when I blotted some of the larger spatters, it created the sense of water spray.  I was much happier with the result then.  It only remained for me to add the quote.  As usual the prompt word was stamped using the Word Chain Alphabet by Claritystamp using Versamark ink; this time heat embossed in Cosmic Shimmer detail silver embossing powder.  The rest of the quote was printed off using my Dymo Letratag.  I decided to go round all the letters of 'soft' and the quote blocks with my black Sakura micron pen to cause them to stand out and provide a contrast with the softer background image.

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