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Bumblebee fanatic & wildlife lover living in, & taking inspiration from, the beautiful North East of England. I am accompanied on my journey through time & space by my special bloke, gorgeous girl, 3 daft cats, 5 fish & visiting, very shy, hedgehog.

Tuesday, May 04, 2010

Horoscope & Squirrel - ATC latest

I have received word that Roxanne @ Willowing & friends has recieved the ATCs that I send her for the April swap so I can post the details of the cards I made for her.
The theme for April was Horoscope and AN Other. As Roxanne's starsign is cancer I worked my design around this, looking through archived images of the earliest images of the representation of 'the crab'.
My design was worked in mixed media - pen & ink, watercolour, gouche and acrylic. It was finished by coating in acrylic pearlescent ink and then finally in acrylic varnish. This gave the card a shimmer effect and blended in sharp edges.

ATC 1 - Horoscope

For the second card I decided to create a painting of a squirrel - I have no idea why (I guess I just enjoy painting animals). This was initially going to be an inked sketch - however I started working with some vivid gouache colours and decided that I liked the effect of a heavy application of a combination of gouache and acrylics. The work was completed by some more delicate brush work which took the place of ink (as ink can sometimes be particularly difficult to apply effectively over acrylic paint). To complete the card a couple of coats of satin varnish were applied to add a sheen and protect the paint.

 ATC 2 - Squirrel

1 comment:

Unknown said...

Really lovely Sarah!