Friday, October 08, 2010

Latest projects from La Sirena class

I have finished 2 new projects from Suzi Blu's La Sirena class!
The first one is a folk art mermaid which I wood-burned on an old cigarbox. This was a fun project although the wood was very dry and hard to work on. Next time I'll use clear gesso and sandpaper to make the surface smoother and easier to work on! But I like it anyways and it's a great box for keeping my pencils.


The cigarbox before I started.


The wood burned mermaid with her face and body colored with pencils.


She's finished!! Added a little star-fish as a knob.




The inside of the box, painted and collaged with paper.

The second project is a painting of a folk art mermaid. I'll show you a couple of the stages it went through before I liked it and started with bees waxing it. It was my very first time to use bees wax on a painting and I LOVE it. I used an ordinary old iron (with no holes in it) which I bought for just a couple of Euros at a fleesmarket. The 100% bees wax I use is in thin sheets and are normally used for making candles. This is very handy because I don't need to melt the bees wax first. Next thing I'm going to buy is a small quilt iron!!


Just the background and the mermaid figure made of paper.


Here I added modeling paste on the hair and star-fish. I used self-made masks for making the dolphins and plants.


Here I added some blue sand and made more depth in the painting by making shadows with a purple pencil.


I wasn't pleased with the first color of the tail and experimented a bit with different colors. I ended up with a purple tail with pink scales.


This was the mermaid before I started with the waxing.


And voila here she is!! I ended up covering the dolphin at the bottom because I wasn't pleased with it. IRL she looks even better!


4 comments:

Sanna F said...

Totally beautiful.. I love your work!!!

Marit said...

Wat MOOOOIII Anniek!! Beeswax... ik ben er toch zo nieuwsgierig naar! Moet dat echt ook een keertje aanschaffen. Dank, voor het laten zien van alle verschillende fases van je werk proces. Is echt leuk om zo te volgen welke beslissingen je neemt! Het resultaat is prachtig!

Jenny Bergvall said...

Omg soooo sweet. I just love both of your work. LOVELY!!!!!

carrot said...

It's so amazing, so magical. I'm staring at those images like a full, I really admire your work :)