Per the cardiologist's orders, I've been trying to find a middle ground. I have been taking it easy and finding a slower pace. Which is kinda boring really, but I know it's what I should do. For the last couple of days, I've been feeling a bit down. Hate to have the blues...So, today I asked myself what makes me the happiest...Designing stuff and working with my hands...Well Hello...Jimbo, get to it! Art Therapy is a good thing!
So, I pulled out a big sheet of Kraft paper, some paints, stencils, a canvas and of course chipboard. I sat down in a comfy chair, grabbed a nice bottle of water instead of a Coke and had a few low sodium almonds to help with my artistic journey.
I was off...keeping with the Halloween theme, here's what I came up with...A Backlit Halloween Canvas...
I tissued the canvas for texture and then painted the canvas background with some orange and brown. I then dry brushed some black paint and metallic espresso onto the canvas. I then used my swirl stencil with some black spray ink to finish it off. Of course, I had to sling some white paint onto the canvas to wake it up a bit.
I adhered some of my chipboard Just Bits Swirls to the canvas and some stars for some dimension.
I then set the canvas outside to dry and then found Triton eating a bedroom pillow! Oy Vey! I started work on the skull.
I cut a spooky skull out of Kraft chipboard and sprayed it with a low odor fixative and then painted it with white Gesso. I covered it with some Idea-ology newsprint paper and cut out the eyes, nose, teeth, and details with a craft knife. I grunged Mr. Skull up with some brown ink and went over the edges with some black ink. I then used one of my stencils and sprayed black ink to form the wiggles on the front.
I took a piece of tracing paper and smeared some brown ink on it and took a paint brush and blended it together. I then cut the tracing paper to fit on the backside of the skull.
Next, I heated up the hot glue gun and adhered a battery operated set of mini LED lights around the backside edge making sure I placed the on/off button at the top where I could reach it. I then added some square wooden blocks to the back of the skull so that the skull would float off the canvas.
I hot glued the backside of the blocks and adhered it centered-ish onto the canvas.
DONE!!!
Then I listened to my MOM and sat down and rested while I wrote this blog...So there! LOL
Hope you can find some Halloween inspiration from this!
Have an awesome week!
Jim
The Gentleman Crafter
