Today while trawling the treasures at One Little House ning, I came across a video by MitsiB called The other side of Mixed Media...not so safe and nice as the images one usually finds at online art classes. It reminded me of the time I had 2 blogs...one for every day use and one for expressing the darker side of life.
I call this "For a Moment of Silence"
The background was inspired by Jeanette House's 100ish paintings video(free class) where she used stencils to build texture...I has piles of stencils(haven't found them all yet lol)
Recycling a childs paint by numbers canvas board...
by covering with a layer of white gesso.
Pink/blue/brown and black acrylic paint...and go for it!
til you are happy with the result :D
Started picking out images with white stabillo pencil...
Found this skull right away...
then this sad stressed out young mother...
worked on it for a couple of hours with acrylic/glaze mix and black pencil, before final layer of stencilling with gold acrylic(can be seen on main photo)
As I started this piece, I was reliving moments from my early years of motherhood...so tired and distressed, full to the brim with emotion so that I felt like my skin was going to burst open and let out all the angry thoughts inside me....and I was experienced with looking after babies already. So I have an overriding instinct to offer assistance to the fraught young mother in the supermarket, trying to look perfect and in control as her baby screams and howls. It's amazing the difference it can make to their day, when some one who knows what they are going through just offers them a couple of words of encouragement...and a cuppa.
By the time I had finished, I was no longer seeing monsters carrying off screaming infants...but the wise ancients consoling and cradling tired babies, so their mum can have just a few minutes of calmness, the soft wings of the moth dulling the noise surrounding her.
Enjoy :D XXX
