It's proved to be an interesting Saturday. Harley seems to have earned his hunting chops with a sparrow, he is enjoying the great outdoors now how to get him to take full advantage! Still hunting is good, yes really The Orange aka Pounce often brought his toys him and if it stops Harley chewing on me I can live with it.
Met up with a colleague from Evolve, we used to share our drive to work and had really great chats in the car. Now I've retired we both kinda miss that it was a really nice catchup over coffee and cake. Already looking forward to next time.
Back in the playroom I finished this canvas. It is the first one I've done in longer than i can remember!
It is 20" x 8" not an ideal blog size sorry about that. The inspiration is Swanage in Dorset and came to me on Thursday evening. The idea to use papyrus came to me from
The House that Stamps Built challenge.
Primed the canvas with white gesso. Next layers blues, greys, white, yellow and red acrylic paint, If you know Dorset you'll know it is hilly driving into Swanage you go down quite a steep hill as you do to almost all the harbours on the Jurassic coast. Driving round the bay and then looking back across the water you face a hill side with property on top. The coast line curves back around behind this well small cliff. I've aded Old Harry Rock with his wife on the canvas but you cannot actually see them from this vantage point.
So basic impression of land and bay mapped out a piece of natural fibre ribbon stuck in place to define land and water. Using gilding glue Be Creative Wonder Embossing Crystals melted on to give depth to foreground, water and sky. Papyrus torn and stamped Inkadinkado seagull, Tanda Holiday in Dorset ad. Glued these on without sticking the edges down finally added some gritty dimension paste down the left and for Old Harry + Mrs. Then I went to bed. Why the Seagull? They are scary in Swanage big gulls who assume that bag of fish and chips you just got is all for them and they will take it all.
This morning realised that the cliff needed to be darkened and the lie of the land defined, more acrylic greys and green. The gritty stuff was also painted green and a little more papyrus used to represent the pier. Actually the pier at Swanage has a bend far to complicated for me to represent, if you are interested you can learn to dive from this pier. Didn't want to get messy (meeting friend for lunch) so left it there.
Final stages Rogue Redhead designs sail boat stamped onto paper and coloured with Pro Markers, used more gilding glue to attach it and also some dots and dashes of gilding flakes. Terra paste spread over ribbon, oh and 'pier' coloured with brown Promarker. And we are done, I think.
Here is a picture of Swanage and apart from the cliff I think I'v captured the sense of it. BTW that smudge on the horizon of the photograph is the Isle of Wight.
Sharing my Summer Seaside Mixed Media Canvas with:
Definitely getting into retirement thing so many things to do.