Last weekend I finally decided to take the plunge and try something new. I had been pinning photos of Chinese lantern pods for a while, but couldn't figure out how to create it in an artwork. My biggest problem was figuring out how to do the lacy pod. I kept thinking that I could put the texture over lace and then pull the lace up. It eventually dawned on me that I would be leaving the negative space from the lace, which is the opposite of what I wanted. Then it finally hit me that I needed to put down the negative spaces and fill in the rest. As I was cleaning out my studio, I found some plastic mosaic pieces from a long time ago and thought they would be perfect. It was going to be a learning experiment on creating the lacy pod. I drew out the pod on the canvas, then I laid down some wax paper to glue the pieces to. Once they were all glued down, I took the wax paper mosaic and laid the blended fibers texture medium over the pieces like I was putting grout down. I tried to wipe off the extra with a wet paper towel, similar to how I would treat grout, but I soon found it was wiping too much away. So, I refilled and scrapped as much off the tiles as I could with a palette knife. Next I had to wait until it dried. From there I removed all the pieces. It took 3 evening to get rid of them all. It was very hard to push them out. Some of the texture ripped. Here it is days later and my finger tips still hurt. The last part all consisted of painting. I painted the canvas. I painted my lacy pod. I glued down the lace. Then I finished by painting the stem.
I learned a lot from this experiment. Next time, if I were to do something like this again, I would use bigger mosaic pieces. This would allow more of the painting to show through. I would also put more space in between the pieces. I think that will help with the ripping. It was a fun piece that took patience. Many times I wished for an assistant to either glue the pieces or at the very least remove them for me. I am super happy with the piece. I love the color scheme I went with. All the colors work so well together. I am also glad I put some gold over the lace to add just a little shimmer. Here is the final piece: Chinese Lantern, Acrylic Paint and Texture Medium on Canvas, !6" X 20", October 2014.
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