today i have a set of these gorgeous wood panels, which are just screaming for some mixed media
stuff. so for this painting, i'm going to be taking more of an art journal kind of approach,
intuitive layering of papers and paint, things that i don't often do in my regular watercolor
work. i don't know about you, but sometimes i feel pressured to only work in a specific media
for the sake of consistency, one day becoming an expert in the field of watercolor. you know? i
think i'm not the only person who feels that way. but not only does working in the same thing, doing
the same stuff all the time get really boring, it also kind of robs you of the opportunity to
make accidental mistakes that are really good, discovering new things to like, right?
i did add a part where i made these little hydrangea blossoms
because i did want something to be rendered in watercolor so that i can have that connection
in this piece that i have with all my other work, to make it more part of my body of work.
i got to this scary point in painting where i didn't think that the flowers were
contrasting enough off the background. it just kind of blended into everything, and so i ended
up dripping some dark colored paint on the section to give it something dark to sit against. that was
really scary for me because i felt like this could go bad, like this could be ruining everything,
and i think it sort of did. there are a lot of mistakes that i could have made that ended up not
really being a big deal in the end. but anyway, there is a critique out there that art journaling
in particular, mixed media kind of style, is that some people kind of get mad that it looks
so busy, it looks kind of crowded? i feel like that is definitely the case at this stage of the
painting. the easiest way to address that chaos is to have a singular focal point, something that is
recognizable, and let everything else fall into the background, and that's where the drawing of
this bird comes in. bird seems to be my fallback shape to rely on, and i'm doing this in a classic
graphite sketch kind of style, but it wasn't really chosen randomly exactly. this bird that
i'm drawing is the scarlet crowned kinglet that has visited us on occasion, and i get so excited
when i see him. he's got this scarlet bump on his head that he can flip up or down to flirt
with the ladies, which is why later, i paint that part as a literal crown rather than just painting
a red streak on his head. there was a moment recently where i saw one of him on the balcony,
i was very excited and showing my husband, and he was like, "oh yes, that bird is a king all right,"
and i replied, "he's not a king, he's just a kinglet," which is the title of this painting.
i finished this whole painting using gel medium and scratching into the surface to give
a random kind of swirly texture to it. you can definitely see the watercolor pen bleeding into
the gel medium. i'm really surprised, because i sprayed this whole thing with a matte spray
finish as well, so that really shouldn't have happened, and maybe that's just a sign that
matte spray finishes don't work? i don't know. so through this, i was able to take an adventure,
try something new, have a little bit of fun, but at the same time, have elements in it that harken
back to my regular body of work. this is my art for animals for february. thanks for watching