It's been a couple of weeks since I participated in Jennifer McLean's "Artist's Play Room" challenge this week. The theme is to gather five or so items from your home and create a still life. Who would have guessed that while contemplating what to draw I would discover about myself that I have a number of heart shaped pieces of jewelry!! (Interesting these curious quirks that we discover about ourselves from time to time... lol...) So I decided to use some of my heart jewelry to create a jewelry still life...
This is the first time I've tried painting reflective metal surfaces. What a challenge!! The silver watch pendant actually turned out pretty easy... somehow silver was easy to capture. Gold on the other hand turned out to be really difficult for me to paint.
This was done in my Strathmore Mixed Media Visual Journal with Intense watercolour pencils. The gold... well I finally gave up trying to render it in watercolour pencil and brought out a bottle of gold liquid acrylic and a Pentel gold Slicci pen.... oh, and also a white Sakura Jelly Roll pen. The outlines of the pieces were made with a dark sepia Pitt pen.
The liquid acrylic was painted over everything that was supposed to be a gold metal, and then I added bright highlights with the Jelly Roll pen. On the heart pendant (on the right), the liquid acrylic seemed too dark and flat -- it didn't convey the many shades of gold on the piece especially around the top and centre of the filigree work. Since the Pentel pen has a slightly lighter shade of gold than the liquid acrylic I used it to draw in some lighter shades of gold rather randomly around the face of the pendant and then I added the extreme highlights with the gold Jelly Roll pen.
I feel like I really stretched myself (my abilities and patience... lol... ) on this challenge, so thank you Jenn for bringing me to the realization that I seem to have a 'thing' for heart shaped jewelry and for providing an opportunity for me to step outside my comfort zone. : ) It will be interesting to see what the weekly challenges are for 2013.
The other fun thing I did this week was to visit one of my favourite art supply stores. I have a mixed media type project rolling around in my mind and needed to pick up a few supplies for it. Well... that was the official reason for visiting the store....! And you know how it goes... I came home with a few more items that I originally intended to buy and a head exploding with ideas for more art project. : ) Don't you just love hanging out at art supply stores?
So there you have it... that's what I've been up to creatively this week. What about you??
: ) Fern
