Flowers in Her Hair with Selena Stevens

Today I am going to incorporate some paper art into my painting and we are going to make a heap of layers.  How many layers will there be?

Heres the link to the video of the creation of this page.

So, lets begin…

I began by spraying watercolour paper with water and then I sprayed Colour Spray (Saphire & Grape) and Colour Shimmer Spray (Punch) across the page.  By wetting the paper first helps the colours to disperse and mingle with each other.

While the paper is wet, I placed some White Heavy Gesso on the page and spread it around with a roller. This created texture and randomness. I didn’t blend the colours together too much.  I also splattered the same colour sprays across the page using the stalk end of the spray bottle. 

I placed a stencil over the page and sprayed randomly with my three colours of colour sprays.  This is the fourth layer already and its only the background.

While this page dried I took a 12 x 12 inch scrapbook page (I used Paper- Arts Whimsical 3) and tore the page into circles and leaf shapes. I wet the ripped edges and rolled it between my fingers to create a rolled edge.  These rolled edges were then coloured with Colour Spray (Grape) to take out some of the whiteness.

Using one of my new designs of stencils, Partial Face, I dabbed Black Heavy Gesso through the stencil with a sponge to get an image of a face.  I drew in details such as the hair and neck with a pencil.

The face was painted in my flesh coloured acrylic paint.  The area of the hair was wet with water and then sprinkled with Colour Shimmer Dust (Cobalt) and allowed to disperse.  Using a paint brush the Colour Shimmer Dust was moved around to form the hair.  

A blob of White Heavy Gesso in the top right corner was still wet during this step which created a happy accident of highlights throughout the hair.  

While this blue colour was still on my brush I also added it to the eyes.

Colour Artist Ink (Bordeaux) was used to add strands of hair as well as shading to the face and coloured her lips.

Colour Paste (Singin’ the Blues) was spread throughout the hair with a palette knife and strands of hair were drawn into the soft surface.  A little of the Colour Paste was also placed in her eye.

Colour Paste (Singin’ the Blues) was spread through a stencil in the girls hair with a palette knife. That’s eight layers so far!

Black & White Heavy Gesso were used to add some highlights and details.

The circles of paper were gathered together and stacked on each other to form several flowers. These flowers were attached to the paper in the girl’s hair with a white brad.  The leaves were tucked under the flowers and were also attached with a brad.

I think that is easily 11 layers.  How many layers can you get in your artwork?

I hope you enjoyed this.

Selena