I did this painting in Art Class, based on a photo I took at Winterthur Gardens back in early fall.
Here’s the photo. They have these little greenhouses that they had set up cute little tables with flowers and had some little topiary animals here and there.
And here is my first pass. Pretty ugly but you have to start somewhere! It made me decide to change the color scheme – that’s for sure! This was about 2 hours in.
Here’s the next iteration. This color scheme is definitely much better! This was another 2 hours.
It’s filling in much better now. I think the painting part is done, about another hour and a half in.
I wanted to try something that the teacher had shown me she did on a few of her paintings – adding Leveling Gel Gloss over the painting. She poured a bunch on there and then I manipulated it around by tilting the painting so the gel would flow to all the sides and corners. Then, we laid it on the table to dry (takes about 24 hrs to dry)
The next day I went to pick up the piece, and we “sanded” the gel coat with some 0000 steel wool. Then we rubbed on some Cold Wax Medium. Then, we let it dry and buffed it out. And below is the finished product! I really like that additional technique and have used it on a few more little pieces. The cracking you see in the photo is where the gel cracked – not sure why that happened! Might have something to do with the pigment in the paint or something but I don’t know… but, I kinda like it!
I actually did 3 little 4×4 paintings but I forgot to take a photo of them and I gave one away already! But, here’s a photo of the two:
The one of the left, I left glossy and didn’t add the Wax Medium, mainly because I liked it with the shine. The one on the right I did sand and buff with the wax. Before I put the gel on, I had added some glitter glue to both of them to add some sparkle (which I let dry before I added the gel). Turns out that wasn’t such a good idea. If you look closely you can see almost like a trench where the gel didn’t stick. So, next time, no glitter glue unless the glue is the final coat!
Alrighty – til next time dear readers!