30 Paintings in 30 Days - Day Nine

"Aerial Landscape" (A Study) - mixed media on cradled board, 12" x 12"

Day nine!  Once again, the muse was in the news!  Today's inspiration courtesy of BBC News, which posted some gorgeous aerial photos, so lovely they looked like art.  I decided the shapes and textures of these photos would be my prompt for this piece, which is inspired by an aerial view of olive fields.

Since this was an experimental piece for me today, I'll share the steps I used in case you're feeling inspired and want to try this at home (and if you develop some improvements on these steps, please let me know!)

This piece was built in many layers, beginning with colored tissue paper, crumpled and glazed onto bare board.  After a couple hours of drying time followed by a few minutes with the heat gun, it was ready for the next layer.

​I sponged dark paint onto a piece of textured shelf liner and then pressed tissue paper on top and rolled it with a brayer.  This created strips of textured tissue for the next layer.

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These strips were then glazed on top of the colored tissue paper, leaving a few gaps of the original paper showing through.  The crumpled texture of the first layer showed through the second layer nicely!

Next, I tore pieces of punched computer cards into strips and added them for variety of texture and thickness.

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More strips of light tissue, this time stenciled with scrim in light colors.  I glazed these strips on near the darker pieces, leaving a little of the base layer showing through.

Using more of the computer cards, this time as stencils, I sponged through some dark circles to add a little contrast. 

With a paint pen, I outlined the borders of the "fields" in white.  Once dry, I cam back through those borders with charcoal to darken them, then glazed over everything again to seal in the charcoal.

Returning to the textured shelf liner, I sponged white paint on it and then pressed it on top of the piece using a brayer.  

Using a very fine white paint pen, I highlighted the borders again just a bit.  Colored chalk was rubbed on for the smallest of colored highlights, and then the whole piece was with a final layer of glaze.

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This was quite a bit of fun, and I am pretty tickled with the result.  Not all experiments go this well!